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Updating FileMaker Files in iOS

The process of updating FileMaker files in iOS has always been sort of a question mark, with multiple ideas for how to best accomplish it, each with their own limitations. At PBS, we developed a process to update files in iOS a number of years ago, but we’ve updated the process with some of the newer FileMaker 18 features that make the process more seamless, while altogether giving it a more native look and feel.

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Portage Bay is Hiring!

Portage Bay is looking to hire a new developer to join our team of FileMaker and 4th Dimension developers. We’re a group of experienced developers, some certified, some not, that work together on a variety of projects for clients in different industries, education, and government.

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Refactoring Primary Key/Foreign Key Relationships in FileMaker Pro

Relationships are the basis of relational database design. When set up properly, table relationships will ensure your database runs like a well oiled machine. However, sometimes we run into systems where relationship keys are open to the user, exposing data to the risk of human error if a relationship is changed improperly. It’s sometimes desirable to refactor these relationships to use a proper artificial key relationships to connect tables, a laborious task depending on the size of your database. This post discusses a convenient trick to populate Primary Keys, a reminder about mismatched data types, and a modular script to help populate foreign keys when refactoring a key relationship.

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Using Version control with FileMaker

When developing FileMaker solutions, one of the issues that always comes up is the lack of Version control options. How can you use Version control with FileMaker, and what is it? Read this article to find out.

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Navigating Portals Like a Spreadsheet

We had an interesting request on a recent project where the client wanted to navigate two portals on a layout using the keyboard. The portals needed to be setup in a way that makes them appear to be one large portal with a static header row in the middle. The client also wanted the interface design to allow for very fast data entry. We concluded that using the navigational keys to navigate the portal would be the best choice, since it performed similar to navigating a spreadsheet.

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4D World Tour 2019

FileMaker gets a lot of attention in our blog, but we are doing ongoing development and support on 4th Dimension applications for about 10 clients currently, keeping at least one of us at Portage Bay busy doing 4D development at any given time.

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