| This is meant to be a hands-on book. The idea is to have you do various exercises so that you become familiar with FileMaker Pro. The book doesn’t have that much to do with theory, although you will learn some along the way. There are other books for theory, if that’s something you care about.
The FileMaker Pro PDF manual shows you features. What I want to do is take you through a group of exercises that use those features. That way, when you’re done, you’ve actually created some databases that you can use, and you’ll know what it feels like. I want you to learn how to drive by getting behind the wheel. You can read the manual for the rules of the road.
Updating this book has been a combination of excitement and frustration. The excitement comes from discovering a new way of describing some feature of this program in a way that has the potential to really make it understandable. The frustration comes from knowing that someday there will be a better way. Let’s face it: Indexes just aren’t good enough, especially if you don’t know the terminology. See if you recognize this: “How do I make the program do that thing I want it to do or that was called by another name in some other database I used to use?” Another frustration is that I’ll give you an overview of an area, only to tell you there’s more in another chapter. Somehow, I want to inject it into you all at once, like in a vaccination but with less pain! Something like what they did with those knowledge chips in The Matrix. |
