Filemaker pro for mac os x pro#

If database connectivity is required on multiple computers, it is necessary to set up a DSN on each computer. A single DSN can not be used on multiple computers. The scope of a DSN can be restricted to a particular computer user or to a computer system. It is kind of like having a shortcut or alias on your desktop linking to a file on a server, except the shortcut is a DSN and instead of a file on a server, it links to a database.īy setting up a DSN, you are assigning an arbitrary name, or shortcut, that will be recognized by your computer as a pointer to a server and database. It allows users to set up a DSN, or Database Source Name, that can be used by any ODBC aware application on a particular computer to send queries and receive data from a specified data source. ODBC, an acronym for Open Database Connectivity, is a standard protocol for communicating with databases.

Filemaker pro for mac os x pro#

The only thing you can not do from within FileMaker Pro is create tables and fields. You can now use FileMaker Pro as a friendly front-end to any MySQL, MS SQL, Oracle, Access or any ODBC capable database. Theoretically, you could create an entire FileMaker Pro database based solely on MySQL data tables with no tables defined within the FileMaker Pro file.

Through a layout, you can then add, remove or modify the external records as if they were in a FileMaker Pro table. You can even add calculation and summary fields to the tables for use within FileMaker Pro. Calculations can be made in the context of a data source table. Tables can be added to the relationship graph, layouts can be created showing records from a MySQL (or any ODBC capable database) table. The data source acts similar to a reference to another FileMaker Pro database file. In FileMaker Pro 9, ODBC connections are treated like a FileMaker Pro external data source, formerly known as file references. In databases I had created in FileMaker Pro 7 where data synchronization with a MySQL database was required, I was forced to first delete all data in each MySQL table before repopulating it with live data from the FileMaker database. Limitations of this functionality included the following: Using the Execute SQL script step, you could specify a ODBC DSN (Database Source Name) and execute any SQL statement that you can build with a FileMaker Pro calculation which could include field data.

Previous Versions of FileMaker Pro and ODBCįilemaker Pro has had the ability to connect to and use ODBC as early as version 7.