Superfast Reporting with PSOS and Virtual Lists

Faster Reports with PSOS and Virtual Lists

Anders Monsen’s DevCon 2017 presentation is loaded with great tips about PSOS and Virtual Lists, something your clients need from time to time. He doesn’t stop there, however, as he combines the use of ExecuteSQL to really speed up reporting.

If you haven’t heard of Virtual Lists, it’s a technique for easily grabbing data from multiple sources, saving it into global variables, and parsing the information into an unrelated table.  It’s a powerful technique that free a developer from some of the constraints of normal FileMaker reporting.

Here a partial list of the subjects covered in the video:

  • How to grab easily parsed data using ExecuteSQL (hint: don’t use the default delimiter)
  • How to build and test scripts in PSOS
  • Tips from the audience on things to test for when running PSOS
  • How to store the data in a global variable and parse it into the virtual table on the fly
  • How to add headers to the virtual table report
  • Formatting options to make the report look better

There are four free FileMaker downloadable files available, as well.

If you haven’t built virtual lists before, watch this video and learn how to build powerful reports using PSOS and Virtual Lists.  If you have, watch this video to learn how to optimize what you already know.


People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.

Isaac Asimov

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