Developer’s Guide
Table Of Contents
- Chapter 1 Getting started
- Chapter 2 Using FileMaker Developer features
- Chapter 3 Using the Developer Utilities
- Overview of preparing your solution files
- Modifying database solution files
- Considerations for a runtime database solution
- Binding databases into runtime database solutions
- Saving and reusing Developer Utilities settings
- Converting and upgrading solution files
- Removing full access privileges from databases
- Chapter 4 Distributing runtime database solutions
- Chapter 5 Customizing database solutions
- Chapter 6 Creating custom layout themes
- Chapter 7 Developing third-party FileMaker plug-ins
- About external functions
- About the example plug-in
- Installing, enabling, and configuring the example plug-in
- Description of the FMExample plug-in’s external functions
- Using the example plug-in
- Customizing the plug-in example
- Requirements for writing external function plug-ins
- FileMaker messages sent to the plug-in
- Avoiding potential Mac OS X resource conflicts
- Providing documentation for your plug-in
- Registering your plug-in
- Appendix A Feature comparison of the runtime application with FileMaker Pro
- Index
Chapter 2
Using FileMaker Developer features
In addition to all of the features that are available with
FileMaker Pro, FileMaker Developer contains a number of advanced
development and deployment features to speed up and enhance the
development process. The FileMaker Developer features explained
in this chapter are:
1 the Database Design Report feature for publishing comprehensive
documentation on the schemas of databases
1 the Script Debugger for systematic testing and debugging of
FileMaker scripts
1 the File Maintenance features for compacting the size of database
files and improving their performance
1 the Custom Functions feature for creating custom functions for use
anywhere within a file
FileMaker Developer also includes the Developer Utilities for
creating, customizing, and deploying runtime database solutions.
See
“Using the Developer Utilities” on page 17.
Creating Database Design Reports
Use the Database Design Report feature to document the schema of
your database and publish it to an HTML or XML file. You can
choose which elements and database tables in the database that you
want the report to cover. The HTML version of the report is
hyperlinked and can be viewed or printed in a web browser.
With the Database Design Report feature you can:
1 examine a textual representation of your database schema
1 gather statistics on the structure of your database
1 use the information in the report to recreate the structure of your
database if you lose the original database files
A Database Design Report in HTML format includes a Report
Overview that provides a snapshot of the elements in each database
file. The Report Overview contains hyperlinks to details about all
elements in each database file. A Database Design Report in XML
format contains the same information, ready to be transformed into
whatever format you require.
To create a Database Design Report:
1. Open all database files for which you want to produce a Database
Design Report.
You must have full access privileges for any file for which you want
to produce a Database Design Report and the file must be open in
FileMaker Developer. You can run a Database Design Report on
local or remote files.
2. Choose File menu > Database Design Report.
3. In the Available Files list, clear any files that you want to exclude
from the report by clearing the checkbox associated with the file.