FileMaker Fever

FMTouch: FileMaker in your Pocket on your iPhone

Update Aug 8: FMWebschool has just lowered the price of FMTouch to $69.99 from $99.99. They are offering $50 FMWebschool store credits to buyers who paid the full $99.99 amount.

I didn't see this one coming. FMWebschool is rocking hard. Their new FMTouch iPhone app shows true promise.

FMTouch provides a way to migrate a relational FileMaker database to reside locally on your iPhone or iPod touch. You can enter and edit data from your phone.

Even better, you can wirelessly sync your changes both ways back to a local or hosted FileMaker database. Realistically, you have to expect all sorts of constraints in these early days. But, watching the video, this mobile FileMaker app is already pretty darned amazing.

Today's press release provides you some of the details, but there's also a quick Intro Video and a detailed nuts and bolts tutorial video for your viewing pleasure. There is a downloadable list of features.

You get native performance, syncing and you are untethered. You don't have to have wi-fi while you are out away from your computer the way you would with a web app. This is truly fascinating.

FMWebschool uses a current DDR of your database to create a native iPhone version of the database. That's a pretty good trick in itself. Keep an eye on FMTouch. It is worth seeing how things go.

Hardcore FileMaker iPhone enthusiasts (especially those with bucks up clients who want to be first on their block with a FileMaker database running on their iPhones) should dive in now. It will cost you $100.

FMtouch was released on the Apple App store on August 5. You can buy FMTouch on the App store. A newer version (1.6) has already been submitted and is awaiting Apple approval.

FMTouch Youtube Video

FMCode: new FileMaker resources site

Hey FileMaker developers and advanced users. Someone in the FileMaker community is helping us out. Next time you say to yourself, "someone else must have figured out this FileMaker need before", head over to FMCode and have a look see. I'm grateful for the efforts. I could not find an About screen and it looks like the site is just now coming online. Bookmark it and keep an eye on this timely resource.

How to Do Finds Inside your Big Scripts

This is a quick one. When you have a 4 page script like the one I'm working on right now, you need a way to quickly see if you've referenced a variable or not.

The reason I needed this is that I discovered I was using $_JobID and $_Job_ID in different places in my large script. I went around and standardized on $_Job_ID and wanted to delete my set variable for $_JobID. That's when I needed the find in script feature to make sure I had eliminated all references to $_JobID first.

Here's how:

Print your script except don't print just save it as a PDF. Now search inside your PDF to your heart's content!