Greg Smith: Filemaker2Radio

Test only <%workspace.callingFM(server:"203.58.233.54",port:"591", database:"driveInstructors.fm",mainlayout:"main", indexlayout:"",textboxes:"description")%>

I've been talking to David Davies about the exciting work he's doing over at his place hooking database-driven rss feeds into Radio's aggregator and picking it up in a Manila-driven search engine!!! Hugely innovative stuff! Furthermore, he tells me he's got Filemaker Pro hooked into the system so I've been trying all day to figure it out for myself. Finally I've got something running on a Manila site of my own which I've called Greg's Newsfeeds. So far it's just a little newsfeed box using the manila "viewRssBox" macro. So at least I've managed to get Filemaker to put out an Rss file but I haven't got onto any of the Radio Aggregator part of it yet. One thing's for sure I'm going to stay glued to David's site for further developments.

I haven't forgotten my FilemakerRadio Bridge either. It's all done and working fine on my own desktop. I just have to work out the best way of sharing it with others. The toolmaking section of the developers area is not as thorough as I had hoped. I may just have to study Dave's tools more closely and copy his methods.

One thing that's slowly dawning on me is the idea of using Radio to deliver cached reports from remote FMpro databases (just like the news aggregator) and for searching etc to be performed on the cached information residing in the Radio object database which, of course, is sitting on the desktop and should therefore produce better performance. Chris Hansen and Brian Ablaza have both pointed me in this direction and I know Chris is doing some great stuff with Filemaker, XML and PHP. In Radio 8 terms, I'm starting to visualise Filemaker Pro and its 'web companion' as a sort of a 'cloud' element with regular updates, upstreaming etc all happening in the background and drive by the Radio Tool that I'm working on. I'm nearly sure this could be made to work OK.

I'm getting heaps of great email responses from this page. So many ideas floating around on this subject. For the moment I'm trying to stay focused and produce a Radio Tool to demonstrate the basic concept of using Radio as a client for Files served from Filemaker Pro using its 'web companion'. The tool is nearly done. There's just some tidying up to do and I've still got to figure the best way to publish to tool for others to try out.

Looks like quite a few people might be interested in working with Filemaker Pro and Radio. Thanks for the 'Scripting News' link Dave. Sure bumped up the traffic! Two quick points for this post: 1. I wish Radio's 'stories' feature worked better. I'd love to use it to organise my thoughts and provide more considered documentation. I know others have made the same point and I guess it'll come. 2. I'm in the middle of my attempt at a Radio 8 Tool. I'm calling it FMRadio and hopefully it will help to set interested Radio users up with a very effective 'client' for Filemaker Pro files served through the 'web companion' plug-in. Stay tuned.

Anyone interested in using Filemaker Pro on the web should really read this page on the Filemaker site. What I get from that page is kind of an admission that XML can work more efficiently than the 'cgi' style of interaction involved in products such as 'Lasso' , Frontier (non-xml) and the 'web companion' itself. They put it like this: XML makes a very lightweight envelope to hold data so it's fast to read and fast to write and I would heartlly agrees having had 6 years experience with FM on the web using all of the 'cgi' connectors above.

The really good thing about using 'Usertalk' varbs (eg. xml.compile) to process the XML output of Filemaker Pro files on the web is that a single utility script can be used to create html tables for all FM databases irrespective of the field names, field types or even number of fields in each instance. This means that any new FM databases can be setup for the web quite quickly. All that needs to be done is for the utility Frontier/Radio script to be pointed at the correct server, port and new file( with 'web companion' turned on) and Bingo the new records should show up on the web page nicely presented in a table as a fully integrated page within the general website. Relational data including borrowed pop-up lists and portals can also be handled in this way.

Why use Filemaker and Usertalk apps to make online databases. 1. Filemaker 'web companion' is, by itself, as far as I can tell, at the moment, inadequate to provide truly sophisticated online access to FM files. 2. What is generally required is access to FM data within the context of a dynamic and flexible website such as those that can be provided by Frontier/Manila/Radio. if FM data can be made to appear seamlessly within a site that already contains mature features such as discussion boards, membership, online page editing and templates you have an impressive product. 3. Frontier contains its own object database why use FM at all?

For many purposes this may be true but FM, as a relational database, is more effective and with large volumes of data and easier to use in terms of sorting, constructing detailed search queries, deleting multiple records etc.
clients may like the idea of having a 'take away' FM database file to examine and use at their own convenience quite separate from the web interface They sometimes do not like the idea that all the collected data is 'hidden' within a Frontier table somewhere.

4.FMPro v.5 contains support for XML, The Filemaker co advocates its use in the deployment of FM based web sites and says, in its own introductory page: The server that uses XML performs faster, is more customizable, and can more easily exchange data with other databases.[source] 5. Frontier was one of the first scripting applications to make widespread use of XML and it contains many very handy inbuilt verbs for the handling of the type of XML data that FM can produce. They are a natural match.

I would like to talk some more about the idea of Usertalk and Filemaker Pro to build web based applications. I am confining my assessment to the question of integration using the XML output of Filemaker Pro because I think that this is by far the most exciting possibility for interoperablility at the moment. I've been asked for my views on the relative merits of Filemaker Pro integration with Frontier Manila and Radio? All three possibilities are worth exploring in my opinion.

Userland App:	Advantages	Disdvantages
Frontier:	Powerful, dynamic web server, flexible. Allows open web based access to FM.	Expensive for small business/private use.
Manila:	mature online app. ready to use with membership, discussion board etc	Refitting for FM requires tinkering and probable need for full Frontier app (as in above) anyway.
Radio Userland:	Cheap, desktop based. suited to intranet/personal access	Not yet mature. Must be installed to allow FM access.

For OSX and Filemaker freaks - Cocoa Dev Central: Using ASS to Access FileMaker. (ASS stands for AppleScript Studio, but it’s funnier abbreviated.) [mac.scripting.com]. And a further link from that site to a German DTP product "Ragtime" featuring "Filetime" for use with FMPro.

I've been getting some interest from others in my previous posts about the possible workings of Radio with Filemaker Pro, presumably as content management tools. There has been some talk about this matter on the Discussion page and I've done some preliminary scripts which are rough and ready but I think show that the 2 applications can talk quite well in the common language of XML. Robert Parker, in particular, is showing quite a bit of interest in this matter and I'm thinking I might use my new weblog to document my explorationsin this area. It would be something I've never bothered to do before but, with these new Radio toys to play with, it might be fun.

Update on the last message. I've now worked out how to upload Radio's native OPML files to the cloud. I was having trouble as they were being automatically rendered as html files. Thanks to Andy Fragen I've created a new folder within my Radio www folder, called it 'opml' and put a #prefs.txt file in it turning off the file rendering process for all files that go into that folder. Now I can dump my own opml files in that folder and as they magically go upstream they stay 'opml' files and don't get converted to html. Why is this good? Well it means that I can put up scripts and macros that other people can download directly to their own copy of Radio using the File . . "Open URL" menu item in Radio. Anyone interested in using Filemaker Pro with Radio can now copy this url into the "Open URL" menu box and get the script plus full instructions for accessing a test FM file I am making available. Let me know if you try it.