Other Sites

Author: Jesse Feiler

Publisher: Sams Publishing Co.

ISBN: 0-672-32578-0

Pages: 476

Price: USA - $24.99 / CAN - $35.99 / UK £17.99

Experience Level: Beginner

There have been several milestones in the FileMaker program, and version 7 was one of those milestones. As it turned out, there was a double-whammy: not only were the changes in FileMaker extensive, the FileMaker company chose to essentially drop any viable documentation for the program. The pamphlet that shipped with the program was surprisingly pathetic. Either way, it was up to third-party writers to fill the information void and supply users the "how to" that had been dropped by the company. "Sams Teach yourself FileMaker 7 in 24 Hours" can do a reasonable job getting most people started, but the road might be a bit bumpy for some, and Jack Bauer will not be there to help you.

Admittedly, the FileMaker program is one of those programs that in which it's a bit of a challenge to teach just the basics because there are so many aspects that one needs to understand to progress. That is, when creating a database, you need to understand why there are text fields, number fields, etc., and how to make them interact. How do you arrange the fields, how do you enter data into the fields, how do you print those fields...each of these can require decisions that effect other aspects of other decisions. In other words, you can't start at the beginning to learn FileMaker, you have to (at least) start in the middle. That's kind of hard to do.

In short, FileMaker is a database program in much the same way that MS Word is a word-processing program. In both cases, the user starts with a blank page. But, as opposed to filling up a page with text, in FileMaker one needs to create fields and calculations, design layouts, create scripts (macros), and perhaps even create relationships to other databases before one enters a single piece of data. The good news is that it's easier to do this in FileMaker than in any other database programs, the bad news is that it's more difficult than filling up a page with text.

Thus, as you read through most of the early chapters of "Sams Teach yourself FileMaker 7 in 24 Hours," there are constant references to later chapters. If you are new to databases in general, and FileMaker in specific, you will need to go through a good hunk of the book before you start making sense of FileMaker. Take that as a given, not as a warning.

The thing I found rather curious is that for the first five chapters, you do not even create a single field. Rather, Feiler guides you around the full FM interface using the sample databases (templates) that are shipped with the program. In effect, your first five hours are spent being a voyeur. This is not really all that bad of an approach because I've long held that some of my best FileMaker lessons have been when I've done a FileMaker autopsy on an existing database. Sort of an "opening up the hood and seeing how it works" kind of thing.

[It's at this point of the review that I have to point out I've never read a "Sams Teach Yourself (some program) in 24 Hours" before, so I have nothing to compare it to. As such, I have to compare it to itself.]

At the end of each chapter is a short "Q&A" where the author provides a question based on the material in that chapter and provides an explanation. For example, on Chapter (hour) 4 (Printing Data), one of the two questions is "Why do you have to use Preview mode to see how things will print?" This is followed by three "Workshop Quiz" questions. For example in Chapter (hour) 13 (Creating a FileMaker Database), there is the question "How do you create Yes/No buttons?" This is followed immediately with the three answers. Lastly, there is a final ending called "Activities," which includes more questions, but this time with no answers. These may offer some tempting "food for thoughts" to get you geared up for the next chapter (hour).

The approach in this book is generally cautious, with hours 1-5 playing with the pre-made templates, and hours 6-12 Modifying Templates and Databases where you take the templates you were looking at in the first 5 hours and start to dig into them.

It isn't until hour 13 when you start to create fields in the third section called "Creating FileMaker Solutions." To the author's credit, he has you create an example database that manages to utilize each and every kind of field. Then, by hour 14, he adds to this database by creating a new table so that the database becomes relational. This section adds more examples to calculations, scripting, layouts and the "not to be left out" summaries. Finally, this section spends its last hour (#20) on FileMaker Developer. This is a curious addition if only because it's an hour that seems like it could have been added in the appendix, leaving more time for a deeper examination on the FileMaker program itself.

The final section for hours 21-24 is called "Sharing FileMaker Solutions," and goes over working with FileMaker over a network and on the web, and using FileMaker with other applications via XML and XSLT.

The Appendix provides suggestions and examples on how to covert a pre-FileMaker 7 database over to version 7, a listing of FileMaker Functions and of Script steps and some extra information on using FileMaker Server.

Interspersed throughout the book are "By the way" comments that occupy the pages sidebar in most books, but are simply provided here as a border. Either way, they supply a comment on the subject at hand. These are mostly good and useful. A surprising one is found on page 230 in Chapter 14, letting you know that copies of the database you are creating can be found at the author's site (www.philmontmill.com) and at the publisher's site (www.samspublishing.com). The latter is not obvious to find, and, disappointingly, there is no mention of this in the Introduction or any other location I could find in the book. Yes, I may have missed this, but I looked. The curious thing is that the files, once downloaded, cover Chapters 13-17, 23 and Appendix A. I am glad to see this because Chapters 13-17 build upon themselves, and if you wish to skip any of the earlier chapters, you would have to do them anyway to have the files to do the later chapters. Sadly, these files are hard to find out about, hard to find at the publisher's site (and you have to register at the publisher's site to gain access to these files), and a bit of a challenge to find at the author's site. For all these hurdles to obtain these files, I do not know whether to blame the author, the publisher, or both.

Because of the book's structure, with so much time in the beginning spent on just looking around, the author ends up spending a certain amount of each hour telling you things that you can and/or will be doing. The problem is that he tells you things you can and/or will do as opposed to guides you on how to do them, and I ended up feeling more confused than feeling like I was learning something.

I also found there were areas where the information was either vague, inadequate or contradictory. For example, in the section on "Formatting Calculations," the author writes three paragraphs on the advantages of formatting calculations to make them easier to read. This is an important trick in FileMaker because it's very easy for a calculation to appear fairly complex. The good news is that FileMaker doesn't "see" paragraph returns in a calculation, so one can break the calculation out in quantum bits to make it easier to read.

As an example, consider an If-then calculation [The following example is from me, not from this book.]:

If ( IsEmpty ( Roster::phone home ) ; "" ; Roster::phone home & " - H" )

Can also be written as:

If ( IsEmpty ( Roster::phone home ) ; "" ; Roster::phone home & " - H" )

Which is a simple calculation that says "If the field "phone home" in the database called "Roster" is empty, print nothing. If the field isn't empty, then print the stuff in the field and add an " - H" at the end. Or, in my re-write, it says:

If this condition exists ; do this ; otherwise do that

As an extra, a FileMaker tip from me: the field "phone home" is not a command or request, it is a field for the home phone number. I've learned to group similar fields by flipping the English of how the field is presented. Thus for a series of phone numbers I will write:

phone home
phone cell
phone work
phone fax

This way, when looking at fields arranged alphabetically, you do not have to scroll up and down like crazy looking for fields of related subject matter. Similarly:

home address
home city
home state
home zip

While this may not be an earth shattering example, some of FileMaker's calculations can be very long and very hard to read. And anything that's hard to read when you create it can become essentially impossible if you are trying to figure out why the calculation isn't working a year after it was written. So, anything you can do to make things easier to read during the construction of a database is very important.

The ironic catch is that the author explained why this is important, but didn't provide any examples of what he was talking about. (The example above is my example, not his.) At least not on page 111. Amusingly, on page 123, he provides an example of the "Case" function. Case functions can provide options for any number of conditional situations as opposed to the "If" functions which can only give you an "If this-than that, if not this-than the other" (two value) function. Because of this, Case functions can go on and on and on and are immensely assisted by formatting the calculation to make it easier to read. So, it made a lot of sense when the author wrote out a Case example for a 5 value conditional, he breaks down each part in its own line. Then, he parenthetically adds "You can enter in on a single line if you want." So, twelve pages after extolling the virtues of formatting calculations, he tells you you do not have to do this. Well, you don't have to, but you also do not need FileMaker if you don't mind working with index cards. The moral is to learn good habits early, and the author dropped the ball on this lesson.

Truth be told, despite my initial misgivings on how things are presented, the book does get better as you move into database creation. That notwithstanding, I also find the author's explanation seems to be more complex than I'd expect to find in a book specifically focused to beginners.

In short, if you are a beginner, this book will be an asset, especially if you go through each and every chapter (in order) and work at the lessons. Some chapters you should be able to skim, while others may be possible to ignore. Hopefully this book will give beginners a start as to what can be done with FileMaker, and might give them a good tease as to what FileMaker's full potential can be.

___________ Gary Coyne has been a scientific glassblower for over 30 years. He's been using Macs since 1985 (his first was a fat Mac) and has been writing reviews of Mac software and hardware since 1995.