Enterprise, FileMaker, The Web and Everything in Between (Sorta).
a meditation of sorts of making FileMaker solutions in Enterprise environments. I am going to talk about services and APIs. This is a mostly non-technical session. We are riffing on a few things and asking questions.
Really looking forward to riffing on this.
Da future?
It's all about da Services.
- Ernest Koe, #PauseOnError
What is Enterprise?
- Large org with (and/or) many different departments
- need for many different modules, putting them together
- data intensive apps
- sharing common data [but not everything is commonly shared]
- dependency on other resources
- "risky stuff"
Enterprise Center vs. Enterprise Glue
- is your FM source of truth, or a place to put data and save time working with it?
Center
- generalized data-model, centralized data
- dependent modules
- "party" model
- tiered architecture (UI, API, DB)
Glue
- specific data models
- flat as possible
- decentralized data
- integration
Center problems
- more complext UI
- find mode
- cross-tab large data sets (pivot) is hard
- complex graph = slower finds, filtering
Glue problems
- data model too specific
- reporting
- data duplication/state
- integration
- parsing, caching
- UI
The Age of Services
- Truth: loosely-coupled is better
- FileMaker can't be great at everything
- resources <--> native APIs (scripts!) <--> apps <--> REST APIs <--> Web apps / Go/ iOS etc
- some stuff doesn't need de-coupling, if you get for free: JSON, locking, Read/Retrieve (in CRUD)....the graph is good for something.
- And more free stuff!! Find mode; "query by example"; Sort; new layouts; reports...."slice and dice data" in ways you don't get (easy) in JS, et. al.
- "Services and thinking in API terms is what will save us with FileMaker in Enterprise"
- Client/Server, RESTful
Modern FileMaker
- APIs + Services
- JSON
- FMS as API resource; REST has solved many problems already
- great lightweight FM apps
For "homework":
- hashing
- etags
- google "optimistic locking" (sookocheff.com)
Here's a mostly non-technical question for Ernest (and all):
In an Enterprise context, what's the significance that the FileMaker Data API is in "trial" mode?
Data model relational complexity vs. FileMaker UX goodness, and the "OuchFactor":
Thanks everyone:
Here are my keynote slides. https://www.dropbox.com/s/4vs2k6dif2fh009/proof_ek_pause_2017.zip?dl=0
HTML version:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/6ffmk2bxqlga5hp/proof_ek_pause_2017_html.zip?dl=0