WRITE: Execute SQL (I’m not talking about the ExecuteSQL calculation function, that can only read (SELECT), but of the Execute SQL script step, for good).

Two script steps allow interaction with ODBC sources:

Finally, and that is often forgotten -and therefore our today topic- the capability to communicate with a SQL source by script.

ESS performance is well below ODBC potential. I admit that the fact that you can interact with external data just as if they were FileMaker data is great, but the cost in terms of performance is huge. Since the release of ESS in FileMaker 9, developers tend to use it for all interactions with SQL sources. Note that on Mac, a third party driver is required (Actual Technologies). Since the release of FileMaker 15, Postgresql and DB2 have joined the game.

Since FileMaker 9, we used to be able to play with mysql, Oracle and SQL Server. The purpose is here to interact with external data as if they were FileMaker data, through table occurrences, layouts, scripts…). FileMaker can access ODBC data in the context of ESS (External SQL Source).An ODBC driver is provided with FileMaker Pro and FileMaker Server. It is not our topic today but it’s interesting because a FileMaker source interrogated via ODBC will act as any other database. FileMaker can be defined as an ODBC data source.ODBC is implemented in 3 very different manners in FileMaker. 🙂 Some technical background for a startįileMaker has had a great friend for a long time: ODBC. If you answered no to all of these, I’m jealous. Have you never lost your temper in front of a progress bar during a sync operation on a ESS table? Have you never felt anxiety before renaming a field because it could break an import order?

Have you never cursed the SQL developer who uses as a unicity key a concatenation of several columns? Have you never been bothered by inconsistent database structures between a data source and your own application?

In this blog post, I will share a technique that Laurent Spielmann ( and I developed together and that greatly simplifies imports.

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