FileMaker Pro 14: The Missing Manual

Chapter 14. Applying Developer Utilities

As you’ve learned in previous chapters, FileMaker Pro gives you lots of power to create databases that help you and your company get on with your jobs. But as your database’s needs, and your skills, get greater, you’ll start to hunger for tools that help you develop more powerful databases. So if you consider yourself a developer of databases—whether that’s your actual title or just your function—you’ll start to wonder where the developers’ tools are. That’s when FileMaker Pro Advanced comes in. It has power not included in FileMaker Pro. You wouldn’t show up at the Tour de France with a tricycle, and you don’t become a power developer without FileMaker Pro Advanced. Here are some highlights of the pro tools you’ll learn about in this chapter:

• Import, or copy and paste, tables and fields from other FileMaker files

• Trace script errors and run your scripts step by step

• Analyze data referenced in your scripts and calculations

• Create custom functions that aren’t found in the calculation engine’s function library

• Create custom menus that hide native FileMaker features or provide new ones

• Create runtime versions of your database that people can use without their own copy of FileMaker

• Create a Database Design Report (DDR)

These pro tools cost a little more, but the value in time saved is well worth it. For a couple hundred dollars more ($549 for Advanced vs. $329 for Pro), you get developer tools to make your life easier, your work more efficient, and your ...