User manual

Table Of Contents
82 | Creating databases
About choosing a field type
When you define a field, you select a field type based on the kind of
information the field will contain. The field type determines what kind of data
can be entered and what kinds of operations FileMaker
Pro can perform with
the data. FileMaker
Pro uses the field type to interpret the data for tasks like
sorting records and performing calculations.
Select this
field type
If the field data will be
Text Up to approximately 1 billion letters, symbols, and/or numbers used as
text per field repetition, limited by available RAM and disk space. Indexes
nominally based on the first 100 characters of each word or value. Text
fields may contain carriage returns.
Number Values up to 800 digits or other characters, and the negative values of the
same range. Number fields can also contain Boolean values (0 or 1), to
indicate, for example, true, false, yes, and no. Number fields can’t contain
carriage returns.
Date Dates only. Uses the Gregorian calendar with a range of 1/1/0001...12/31/
4000. Month, day, and year order is based on system settings when the file
is created.
Time Times only. A time field can contain the hours, minutes, and seconds
portion of a time. A time field can contain a negative time duration, for
example,-08:40:00.
Timestamp Dates and times to reference a fixed point in calendar time. For example,
10/25/2010 2:39:46 AM
Container 1 Graphics, movies, photos, bitmaps, sounds of up to 4 GB per field
1 Documents, including Microsoft Word or Excel files, PDF files, and so
on
1 Multimedia file types supported by QuickTime 7.5
1 Software
Calculation The result of a calculation formula that uses field values from the current
record or related records. The formula can use values of all field types.
The result can be one of these types of data: text, number, date, time,
timestamp, or container.
Summary A value that’s produced by summarizing field values from more than one
record in the same table.
φμπ10_υσερσ_γυιδε.βοοκ Παγε 82 Μονδαψ, Αυγυστ 25, 2008 3:59 ΠΜ