Filemaker through ODBC

[Bruce Robertson]

> Richard-
> 
> Don't get me wrong about this - I'm not dismissing FMP out of hand by any
> means. We run our accounting system on FileMaker using a system I first
> cobbled together some ten years ago. But the lack of variables hurts, as
> does the fact that programming in FileMaker is limited to stringing together
> macro statements. I should retract my statement about the
> non-programmability, though, since it does satisfy my first-pass criterion
> for the definition, that of conditional branching.

Variables were introduced in several different ways beginning with FileMaker
7 over 2 years ago.

The "let" statement was introduced with 7.0.

Let ( [
myVariableName = FirstName + 78;
myVariableName2 =  32];
MyVariableName & myVariableName2
)

Script parameters were introduced with 7.0

Local variables ($yourVariableName) and global variables
($$yourVariableName) were introduced with 8.0 about 1.5 years ago. Besides
providing variable for scripts and calculations they provide for scripted
control of import, export, PDF and Excel document generation.