If FileMaker Pro can see the SQL data source in the simple Find Data Source dialog, all you have to do is select it, authenticate, and you’re in. Well, with FileMaker 9, you can now reference and use an SQL data source in exactly the same way that you can reference and use another FileMaker file. So for example, by adding a simple file reference to my billing database, I was able to post payments in my checking database at the same time, without actually having to open and edit the checking database. It was finally possible in FileMaker Pro to create applications in which all the data was in one file and all the elements of the application (such as layouts and scripts) were in another. File references opened up a number of opportunities for FileMaker developers. One of the revolutionary features that appeared in FileMaker 7 was the ability to create in one FileMaker database file a reference to another file, and then to use that referenced data as if it were actually stored in the current file. The key to this miracle is the data source reference.

In short, FileMaker Pro 9 offers SQL without tears. I know only a handful of advanced FileMaker developers that actually made use of it.īut that’s about to change: with FileMaker Pro 9, if you’ve got a SQL data source handy that was set up by somebody else, you can now connect to that data source and make full use of it without knowing a thing about SQL.

But this feature was hard to use, didn’t work very well, and in any case was more like data exchange than data access.

Technically, it has long been possible for a FileMaker database to query a SQL data source, then import a copy of the resulting data set to play with. In the past, FileMaker users were by and large shut out of these important data collections, because FileMaker uses its own proprietary (that is, non-standard) database engine. SQL is the standard used to communicate with the big databases found everywhere: in businesses, hospitals, universities, government, on the Web-almost anywhere that a lot of data must be accessed by a lot of people.

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