FileMaker Pro to 4th Dimension Quickstart Guide

FileMaker Pro Sample File Overview

In this section, we review the functions of the sample FileMaker Pro database that is included on disk. This database is intentionally bare bones, and is intended merely to illustrate some of the basic functionality of FileMaker Pro that most databases share. This database can be used as a blueprint from which to construct a corresponding solution in 4th Dimension.

The solution is a standard Invoicing system consisting of five files: Customers, Orders, Line Items, Products, and History. Opening Customers will open the entire solution. Each Customer can have many Orders, and can view those orders in a portal on the Customer's form layout.

customer entry screen shot

Each Order can have many Products, and each Product can appear on many Orders. Since this constitutes a many-to-many relationship, there is a join file called Line Items that reconciles the relationship between Orders and Products.

History comprises all of the different contacts that have been made with a given Customer - all of the phone calls, emails, faxes, etc. that have been sent to or received by the Customer. There is a second layout in Customers that shows that Customer's contact History in a portal. The navigation between the two layouts is done by way of a tabbed interface, which is actually just a set of buttons that move you between the two layouts. Because these are two separate layouts in Customers, any change to the fields in the Customer Entry section of either layout would require the same change in the other layout, thus doubling the amount of work needed to perform a change.

customer entry history screen shot

Navigate around the simple solution to familiarise yourself with the way it works. Note that there is a scripted routine in Orders for assigning a Customer to an Order. You do this by either clicking the "Pick Customer" button in Orders, or by clicking on the CustID field at the top left of the form.

order entry screen shot

When you do this, you will be presented with a screen where you are asked to find a customer by name. Searching for "B", for example, will bring up a list of all Customers whose names begin with "B". You can then click on the customer you want from the list.

customer list screen shot

Some solutions like this use a simple pop-up menu from which to select the customer, but this can be slow for a solution with many customers. Thus we've opted to use the scripted routine instead.

Entering products is accomplished by way of a portal in the Order Entry screen. You select products from a pop-up menu of product descriptions, as illustrated in the screenshot below. The value list for this pop-up menu uses two fields: the ItemID field and a calculation field that combines the Name, Description, and Item Number fields.

product entry pop-up menu screen shot

Again, this value list could take a long time to draw if the product list were long, but generally a list of products is predefined and not open-ended, like a list of Customers is. Thus we've opted to use the value list for product entry.

We have intentionally left the sample database simple. There is a simple data entry layout in Products so that new products can be quickly entered into the system. Line Items has no direct interface, and neither does History, since both files are accessed via portals in other files.