Thursday, May 3, 2012

FileMaker Pro Equivalent to SQL Query or View

Have you ever wondered how to create queries or views in FileMaker Pro on Mac?  I have, and it's one of those odd learning curves that come with being used to straight-forward but fairly technical SQL statements that are customary in Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL and even Access.  Searching for the word "join" returns no relevant results in the FileMaker Pro 9 Help files.

Well, for other SQL developers out there, I hope this tutorial will shed some light on how to join two tables and then create a query or a view: FileMaker Pro: Creating a "Query" or "View"

In summary, here are the key takeaways from the tutorial:
  • A SQL join is analogous to a layout in FileMaker Pro with relationships between tables.
  • A SQL query or view is analogous to using Find Mode in FileMaker Pro with a layout.
  • Simple filters can be applied in Find Mode using Symbols and the Omit checkbox.

Let me know what you think of the tutorial!  Personally, I was super excited to figure out how to import two lists from two different databases into FileMaker Pro in order to identify discrepancies between the two lists, like I would've done using Excel or Access.  Why would I use FileMaker Pro instead of Excel on Mac to do this?  Because Excel is unfortunately case-insensitive.