I collected some thoughts and observations from EngageU 2023, the European Claris / FileMaker Developer Conference held Nov 12-14 in Antwerp. Beezwax was proud to be a sponsor. There were plenty of technical discussions, a few described here, and even moreso, plenty of things that should make us all inspired heading toward 2024. If last year’s conference were the “Biggest Claris FileMaker Conference of 2022“, this year’s EngageU was the Most Inspiring, as well as the Biggest of 2023.
Continue reading “EngageU 2023 – Most Inspiring Claris FileMaker Development Conference”Category: Tools & Add-ons
Leveraging pandas with Python to Analyze FileMaker Data Sets
The pandas library for Python has become a go-to tool for many data scientists and analysts. In this blog post, we’ll examine one strategy for leveraging the highly powerful tools within pandas to enhance data analysis capabilities using the Claris FileMaker platform. We’ll do this by calling the bBox plugin and its built-in Python functions.
Continue reading “Leveraging pandas with Python to Analyze FileMaker Data Sets”Handling Historical Data with FileMaker and AWS Athena, S3 & Serverless
In this blog post, we will explore a solution for optimising a FileMaker app that handles large amounts of data. We will address the challenges of data storage, file corruption, and performance degradation when dealing with historical data.
By leveraging cloud storage and serverless computing, we can offload and query this data efficiently, ensuring better performance and scalability.
Continue reading “Handling Historical Data with FileMaker and AWS Athena, S3 & Serverless”FM-DiSC: Handling Historical Data with FileMaker, AWS Athena, S3, Serverless
Fabio Bosisio from Beezwax demonstrates handling historical data in a Claris® FileMaker® solution, utilizing a combination of AWS services including AWS Serverless, AWS S3, and Amazon Athena’s Interactive SQL. Use cases include archiving, data mining, and reporting.
Continue reading “FM-DiSC: Handling Historical Data with FileMaker, AWS Athena, S3, Serverless”dotfmp: Python + Claris® FileMaker® | Historical Data & AWS Athena/SQS/S3 | UX & DX for Great Solutions
Christos Savva, Fabio Bosisio and Vince Menanno from Beezwax present at dotfmp Berlin, 2023.
This week we’re in Berlin… one of the stops on the Road to Claris Engage 2024 …gathering with the developer community, and highlighting innovation for the Claris FileMaker platform development. As conference speakers at dotfmp Berlin (June 1-3), Christos Savva, Fabio Bosisio and Vince Menanno from Beezwax present three sessions:
- Enhancing FileMaker with Python
- What do you do with all this historical data in your app? [AWS Athena Interactive SQL / Serverless / S3 with FileMaker]
- Elements for Building Great Solutions [FileMaker UX & DX]
Videos: Improving Your FileMaker Code with InspectorPro 7
Posted in All, Claris Development, FileMaker, FileMaker Server, InspectorPro, Performance, Security, Techniques, Tools & Add-ons
Five Ways InspectorPro 7 Can Improve Your FileMaker Code
Want better collaboration, performance and insight for your FileMaker development teams? With InspectorPro you can leverage advanced diagnostics, perform in-depth analysis, and gain insights with new visualizations.
Check out these videos from InspectorPro creator & Beezwax Chief Innovation Officer, Vince Menanno.
Problem Reports Dashboard
Track your progress while reducing problem code, and reducing technical debt.
Script Monitor
Create a visual and interactive representation of your script interactions, where you can monitor them and stay aware of their activities.
Search with LOgiCATOR
Locate InspectorPro 7 data with logical precision, including constrained and unconstrained finds within your solution analysis.
Security Perspective
Identify the privileges and security levels assigned to various user roles for each script.
End to End Web Integration for Claris® Platforms
Alec Gregory from Beezwax presents at the Claris Beyond Meetup.
Let’s talk about building web UIs, JavaScript functions and new integrations for Claris FileMaker and Claris Pro. Learn how you can manage various stages of the web integration process with the open source bzBond.
Continue reading “End to End Web Integration for Claris® Platforms”Transacting Transactions in Claris FileMaker
Posted in All, Claris Development, FileMaker, FileMaker 19, FileMaker 2023, Techniques, Tools & Add-ons
Vince Menanno from Beezwax presents at FMDiSC (FileMaker Developers in Southern California).
You may have read on Claris’s blog that “Developers are excited to use Claris FileMaker 19.6!” As Vince Menanno from Beezwax said in an interview for that blog post:
“This FileMaker release is significant. There’s a possibility to make solutions run faster if you’re leveraging transactions, and for code to be more concise.”
– Vincenzo Menanno, Beezwax
So, let’s talk about Claris® FileMaker® and script transactions in FileMaker 19.6!
Continue reading “Transacting Transactions in Claris FileMaker”Rome FileMaker® Week: Docker, Node-RED, Native Script Transactions and a Chatbot
Vincenzo Menanno and Fabio Bosisio from Beezwax present at Rome FileMaker Week.
This week we’re in Italy… formazione, condivisione e ancora divertimento [training, sharing and more fun] …with the focus on innovations in Claris® FileMaker platform development. As realtori [conference speakers] at Rome FileMaker Week (October 6-8), Vince Menanno and Fabio Bosisio from Beezwax present three sessions:
- Local FileMaker Development with Docker and Node-RED
- The New Horizon: Native Script Transactions in FileMaker
- Chatbot
FileMaker + Tableau | Embedded Dashboards & Expanding Possibilities
Posted in All, Beezwax News, Claris Development, Community, Events, FileMaker, News, Reporting, Tableau, Tableau FM, Techniques, Tools & Add-ons
Vince Menanno from Beezwax presents at AutoEnter Live.
Let’s talk about Claris® FileMaker® and Tableau®!
As a speaker at AutoEnter Live, Vince presents Tableau as a great way for FileMaker developers to build dashboards, improve reporting, create visualizations and enable users to better understand their data. New techniques for embedding Tableau dashboards in FileMaker and using a Tableau Connector enable high-performance user interaction.
Learn more about how FileMaker + Tableau is a “match made in data heaven“, opening new possibilities as the two platforms combine to work as one.
Continue reading “FileMaker + Tableau | Embedded Dashboards & Expanding Possibilities”The Metadata-verse: FileMaker Server Save as XML
Posted in All, Claris Development, FileMaker, FileMaker 19, InspectorPro, Integration, Performance, Tools & Add-ons
As Claris gets further into an Agile groove, there are product releases more often, always with new features and improvements. Claris FileMaker 19.5 is no exception. It includes many new features, expanded extensibility, performance enhancements, and reliability improvements. I want to bring attention to one simple thing that promises to change the world for many of us in the FileMaker developer community: Save a Copy as XML…and the performance improvements running this on FileMaker Server.
Continue reading “The Metadata-verse: FileMaker Server Save as XML”dotfmp.berlin Claris FileMaker Developers 2022
Posted in All, Claris Development, Community, Events, FileMaker, FileMaker 19, FileMaker Cloud, FileMaker Server, News, Techniques, Tools & Add-ons
BERLIN, Germany – Our senior developer Christos Savva attended the dotfmp.berlin 2022 “Unconference” held in June in Berlin. The conference was the first in-person opportunity in over two years for leading Claris FileMaker developers across Europe to meet, share their work, and explore what’s happening in the developer community.
At dotfmp.berlin 2022, more than 70 developers from eighteen countries talked through tools and techniques from their Claris playgrounds. Adding to that excitement was participation by Claris’s engineering and product management teams.
Continue reading “dotfmp.berlin Claris FileMaker Developers 2022”bBox v0.99 Integrates Claris FileMaker with JavaScript, Python 3 and Supports M1 Apple Silicon
Posted in All, bBox, Claris Development, FileMaker, FileMaker 19, FileMaker Server, Integration, JavaScript, Node.js, Python, Tools & Add-ons
We are pleased to release bBox version 0.99 for Claris® FileMaker® on macOS and Linux with new NodeJS and Python 3 integration, and M1 Apple silicon support for GraphicsMagick image processing and JQ JSON parsing functions.
About bBox Plug-in For FileMaker
bBox is a free utility plug-in to extend Claris FileMaker solutions to easily use macOS and Linux code libraries and functions from Python, JavaScript, PHP, Ruby, AppleScript, C/C++, Bash/sh, XPath, and SQLite. Also included is a demo file with more than 210 examples of how you can put bBox functions to work for you.
bBox is available on macOS and Linux, and runs with either FileMaker Pro or FileMaker Server. Here’s what FileMaker Magazine had to say about bBox version 0.99:
Claris Connect integrates Eversign [Xodo Sign], FileMaker and more
Let’s talk about Claris Connect as the way to orchestrate data-driven workflows involving Xodo Sign (formerly Eversign*) digital signatures, Claris FileMaker, Slack and a range of other possible platforms! Fabio Bosisio from Beezwax will walk through details for setting up these types of integrations.
Continue reading “Claris Connect integrates Eversign [Xodo Sign], FileMaker and more”A fast, flexible Tableau Connector for FileMaker
Building a custom Tableau® Connector for Claris® FileMaker® enables faster, more reliable and more flexible connections between Tableau and FileMaker datasources, compared with the legacy Web Data Connector.
For a number of Beezwax client projects, we’ve installed and deployed a Tableau Connector (aka “TACO”) for FileMaker. The TACO was built using the Tableau Connector SDK (provided by Tableau) to connect to datasources on FileMaker Server. The TACO method uses JDBC rather than the FileMaker Data API for the connection between FileMaker and Tableau, and in our testing the performance of data extracts was up to 10 times faster.
Continue reading “A fast, flexible Tableau Connector for FileMaker”bBox for FileMaker v0.98 with M1, GraphicsMagick & Sips
Posted in All, bBox, Claris Development, FileMaker, FileMaker 18, FileMaker 19, FileMaker Server, Tools & Add-ons
We are pleased to release bBox version 0.98, with with new image file functions and M1/Apple Silicon support.
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, C/C++, Bash/sh, XPath, and SQLite. Also included is a demo file that has over 220 examples of how you can put bBox functions to work for you.
Some of the changes in version 0.98 are:
- M1/Apple Silicon binary
- Ubuntu compatible version (in addition to CentOS)
- updated to libxml2 version 2.9.12
- added bBox_GraphicsMagick function & script step
- added bBox_Sips function & script step
- modifications to several functions & script steps to add parameters
- fixed template text used in several functions & script steps to better describe parameters
- limit POSIX commands to 3 cores
- new mode to combine stderr with stdout
Continue reading “bBox for FileMaker v0.98 with M1, GraphicsMagick & Sips”
InspectorPro 7.2 for FileMaker – Faster on M1!
Everything about the M1 Apple silicon leaves you simply delighted and surprised. It’s like the first time you drive a super-charged Tesla and feel the rush of powerful acceleration OR I imagine it’s like when Han Solo first blasts the Falcon into light speed: it must be experienced to be believed.
Continue reading “InspectorPro 7.2 for FileMaker – Faster on M1!”Integrating FileMaker’s Data API and Ruby with the fmrest-ruby gem
We often work on projects that intersect two technologies near and dear to us: FileMaker and Ruby. This allows us to build robust web applications in Ruby on Rails, integrated with data sources from FileMaker solutions. When Claris introduced the FileMaker Data API we were naturally curious to try it out. At the time there was no off-the-shelf Ruby library for us to simply gem install, so we decided to roll up our sleeves and build one. Thus, fmrest-ruby was born.
This article will walk you through setting up and using fmrest-ruby in a Ruby on Rails project. Some level of familiarity with Ruby/Rails and FileMaker’s Data API is advised, although much of the content covered here is applicable to any Ruby project, Rails or not.
Continue reading “Integrating FileMaker’s Data API and Ruby with the fmrest-ruby gem”bBox for FileMaker v0.96 with JSON processing, Python 3 and more
Posted in bBox, FileMaker, FileMaker 18, FileMaker 19, Python, Ruby, Tools & Add-ons
We are pleased to release bBox version 0.96, with JSON processing via jq, Python 3 compile/run, and improvements supporting Zsh, cURL and Ruby.
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, C/C++, Bash/sh, XPath, and SQLite. Also included is a demo file that has over 210 examples of how you can put bBox functions to work for you.
Continue reading “bBox for FileMaker v0.96 with JSON processing, Python 3 and more”
Claris Connect in action
Posted in All, Claris Connect, Claris Development, FileMaker, FileMaker 19, Integration, Tools & Add-ons
Doing the simple is hard. Someone recently reminded me of this when discussing business workflow. Tasks like scheduling, calendaring, communicating and sending notifications are individually manageable, in a world where tools for these tasks exist online. Calendars, email, databases, Slack, and a collection of other apps and services make this possible.
Continue reading “Claris Connect in action”