Our First FileMaker 17 Certified Developers

We’re pleased to announce two Beez who have earned the title of FileMaker 17 Certified Developer.

  • Christopher Edwards, Senior Developer
  • Vincenzo Menanno, Senior Developer

Christopher and Vince are among the first developers to receive this designation since FileMaker 17 Certification was announced last week.

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Lost in Layout Space: Getting to Know FileMaker 17’s Layout Mode

Way back when FileMaker 14 was released, as developers we were treated to the new-and-improved script workspace, adding all kinds of features from line breaks to auto-complete/type-ahead coding. To any of us who spend most of our day working in FileMaker, the response was sheer joy.

For all of its speed, flexibility, and ease-of-use, sometimes our favorite platform is missing some of those “standard”, quality-of-life features you would expect. For a long time, Layout mode has been lacking a few key features you would normally expect to see in a modern design application. With FileMaker 17, we get much closer to bridging that gap, receiving a whole bunch of handy, time-saving features along the way. Let’s dive in and take a look.
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Overcoming TLS Frustrations with Python and macOS Sierra

The short version of this is that you probably want to upgrade to High Sierra (macOS 10.13) if you need to do much of anything with the built-in macOS version of Python and any network tasks.
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Working with FileMaker Cloud Backups Using SSH

Recently, I needed to revert a database file hosted on a FileMaker Cloud 16 server. Due to a problem I was having with the Download function however I had to take a different route from the usual method.

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Logging PSoS Activity: Episode III – Return of the JSON

In looking back at our initial approach to logging FileMaker PSoS (Perform Script on Server) activity, I reflect back on a number of times where this has been extremely helpful. If you have come to rely on the benefits of PSoS then you also know some of its challenges — one of the biggest is debugging and monitoring how long sessions take.

Since FileMaker 16 introduced JSON, in new systems we’ve switched over to using JSON as the main way of exchanging data for parameters. Because we also use PSoS in new systems, we updated our method for PSoS Logging and this blog entry talks about the changes we made there and also restates the usefulness of this log.
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Server-Side Swift: New Hero in Web Town

There’s a new hero in the world of web applications, services, and microservices: Server-Side Swift is making serious waves across the industry. At Beezwax, it’s changing how we approach and solve many typical, long-standing coding challenges.

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Agile Where You Least Expect It

One of the things that I always think about is how linked Agile Methodologies are to Software development. But what concerns me the most is that sometimes it is believed that using Scrum in other contexts is impossible or that it is not even considered.

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FileMaker Server 16 Gotcha: Get ( SystemDrive ) and Friends

FileMaker 16 has been out for several months, however we wanted to call attention to a change that can effect your application’s use of server side scripting. Recently, we upgraded a client project to FileMaker Server 16, and found that critical functionality had mysteriously broken. After a bit of sleuthing and gnashing of teeth, we found that changes to the output of Get(SystemDrive), when executed server-side (PSOS or via a scheduled script), was the culprit.

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Creating Your Own SSL Certificates For FileMaker

Typically, you buy an SSL certificate for a server from a SSL vendor. However, some companies may decide that they want to issue their own SSL certificates. Often this is because the domain is only used internally, and most vendors don’t easily allow (if at all) the signing of server certificates for non-public domains. Additionally, issuing your own certificates can remove complications caused by the certificate verification process used by most vendors, and there are no fees needed for each certificate.

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Large d3.js Application Development

“Code that belongs”. This is the mantra, the quest, of Beezwax Senior Developer Ryan Simms; which he discusses in this ten-part article on building a large-scale web application using d3.js. How to write code that fits the context intrinsically. The article focuses on specific techniques with the data visualization library, d3.js. But the lessons are broad. How do you make something fit — in ways that make it feel like it belongs?

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LOgiCATOR Part 3: Ready, Set, Integrate…Into Your FileMaker Apps

We’re thrilled to announce the official, “integration-ready” version of LOgiCATOR. LOgiCATOR is a modular search interface for FileMaker that can be easily integrated into new or existing solutions. It’s designed to help users locate data with logical precision, via a powerful yet intuitive interface for searching across FileMaker tables. This article includes a download link for the module and demo file, describes what’s changed since the preview version (a lot), and explains how to integrate LOgiCATOR into your FileMaker solutions.

Visit the LOgiCATOR page at Beezwax. Continue reading “LOgiCATOR Part 3: Ready, Set, Integrate…Into Your FileMaker Apps”

FileMaker Konferenz, Salzburg 2017

The 8th FileMaker Konferenz is happening October 12 – 14, 2017 at the Crowne Plaza Pitter Event Center in Salzburg, Austria.

At the konferenz Vincenzo Menanno, director of FileMaker Development for Beezwax presents two sessions on advanced FileMaker development:

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FileMaker and PHP 7

At the Custom Web Publishing (CWP) user group at FileMaker DevCon 2017 in July, a number of speakers (and a big thank you to everyone for a great session!) discussed solutions they’ve taken or investigated for making CWP apps compatible with PHP 7.

At Beezwax, we have a client project with a requirement for PHP 7 compatibility, but many of the available approaches were closed to us due to various constraints, so we came up with this solution.

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bBox 0.88 for FileMaker Now Available

We are pleased to release bBox version 0.88. bBox is a free utility plug-in to extend FileMaker solutions to easily use code libraries and macOS-based functions from Python, JavaScript, PHP, Ruby, AppleScript, Bash/sh, XPath, and SQLite. Included is a demo file that has over 180 examples of how you can put bBox functions to work for you.

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Writing a Markdown Compiler – Part 2

Hello, and welcome to the second part of the Writing a Markdown Compiler series! In case you’ve need it, here is Part 1, Intro/Tokenizer and Part 3, Code Generation.

In this part we’ll talk about the second step in compiling: Parsing – also known as Syntactic Analysis. This part has a bit more theory, so it might take some time to digest. Sip some coffee, relax, take yout time, and as long as you don’t rush it you’ll find it’s not hard at all. 🙂

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bBox for FileMaker v0.86 Now Available

We are pleased to release bBox version 0.86. bBox is a free utility plug-in to extend FileMaker solutions to easily use code libraries and macOS-based functions from Python, JavaScript, PHP, Ruby, AppleScript, Bash/sh, XPath, and SQLite. Included is a demo file that has over 180 examples of how you can put bBox functions to work for you.

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FileMaker & Tableau | A Match Made in Data Heaven!

Last year when I wrote this blog post we were talking about FileMaker 16 and the Data API being in beta. Now that FileMaker 17 has officially been released and along with it the Data API is out of beta and is a version 1.0.

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LOgiCATOR, Part 2: FileMaker Card Windows and Modular Design

In Part 1 of this series, Introducing LOgiCATOR, I mentioned that LOgiCATOR grew out of a search interface I developed for a project several years ago. In ways we’ll briefly consider here, it wasn’t extensible, but all that has changed. As that early search interface grew into LOgiCATOR, it made a quantum leap in context independence. The reason we were able to accomplish that can be attributed to a powerful synergy of FileMaker card windows, JSON, window improvements, new functions, and the Layout Objects window — in short, FileMaker 16!

Visit the LOgiCATOR page at Beezwax.

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Introducing LOgiCATOR: A Modular Search Interface for FileMaker 16

We’re excited to announce the release of LOgiCATOR, a new modular search interface for FileMaker. It’s designed as a module you can drop into a FileMaker application and, with minimal configuration, add a rule-based search interface to any number of layouts in that solution. LOgiCATOR is also a springboard for learning about some great new design and integration features of FileMaker 16, like card-style windows and native JSON.

Visit the LOgiCATOR page at Beezwax.

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FileMaker & Tableau | Building Dashboards with Interactivity

If you’ve been working with FileMaker, then I don’t have to sell you on the fact that it’s a great solution to help you manage your data. Whether you’re an in-house developer, a consultant, or just starting to explore what is possible with this powerful platform, you will at some point come across the need to build in some kind of dashboard. Maybe your group needs to see sales trends for the last year or perhaps you have a system that tracks projects and want to see the daily average of tasks completed. In either case, dashboards are a great way to synthesize large amounts of information and provide you with insight in a simple and informative visual design.

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