Fast FileMaker Finds, with Ranking and Find, Sort, and Rank Search Results

Perform Fast FileMaker Finds, with Sort and Ranking Tech

Fast FileMaker Finds: One of FileMaker’s core strengths. Until you find an instance where it falls short. FileMaker does have a very powerful and potent method of searching data, and, with a little programming help, FileMaker developers routinely make magic happen. Filtered type ahead searches, for example.

But what do you do when you have hundreds of thousands records from multiple data sources, and you need to rank the search results for the end user? And it needs to be instantaneous?

Ernest Koe, co-founder of Proof Group, presented at DevCon 2019 on this topic and the broader subject of traditional search methods. And the video of his presentation is well worth watching for every FileMaker Developer. You will learn something you did not know, and be a better developer for your efforts.

What will you learn

  • The Basics of FileMaker Finds
  • The difference between Finds and Searches
  • The basics of FileMaker indexing
    • Value Indices and word indices  (everything or chunks of everything)
  • Custom Functions (these have not been released yet, but Koe hopes to have them out soon)
  • The anatomy of a find
  • Finds across relationships
  • Finds on deeply related data
  • Ranking results using Levenstein distance and Soundex (the sound of a word)
  • Use quick find in a script on different layouts that are context sensitive and return data as json, then place results into a virtual table
  • Grabbing data from searches and put into an online search engine for sorting, then return and populate the results table.

Search, Elevated: a Technical Survey of Traditional and Modern FileMaker Search Strategies

Too often, our FileMaker apps, and by extension the entire FileMaker Platform, are judged by how effortlessly they are able to perform a search. The goal of this session is to review traditional approaches to implementing search and to introduce developers to new and exciting ways to improve FileMaker search performance and user experience. We will survey traditional approaches such as those using finds/quickfinds, string matching, and explore modern approaches that integrate FileMaker with REST/API-driven, enterprise-scale open source search engines, such as Apache Solr or Elastic Search.

Source: INT21 – Search, Elevated: a Technical Survey of Traditional and Modern FileMaker Search Strategies – Ernest Koe

On God’s Time

A man walked to the top of a hill to talk to God.

The man asked, “God, what’s a million years to you?” and God said, “A minute.”

Then the man asked, “Well, what’s a million dollars to you?” and God said, “A penny.”

Then the man asked, “God…..can I have a penny?” and God said, “Sure…..in a minute.”

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