Background is that I just completed a 70 file upgrade of my company's
FM system from FM5/6 to FM8.

I used MetaDataMagic to find for me 4000 issues to check (mostly
scripting errors that were introduced by FM changing the rules). This
worked very well.

I used MDM for a good 2 months and got spoiled by its interface of
relationships between fields, layouts and scripts, which showed, among
other things, all the layouts, calculations, scripts, and value lists
that use a particular field. In fact, you get every combination of all
these pieces of "meta data" so you can see where any element of your
solution is used, solution-wide.

After upgrading to FM8 I thought I would use the developer report
feature of FM8 Advanced to help me to do some post-upgrade tasks such
as consolidating some tables into common files, and removing what I
call "intermediate calculated fields" whose only purpose was to allow
me to use data more than one relationship away (no longer an issue
with FM8).

But when I ran FM's report on my solution, I was very disappointed to
find that it seems to only show where a particular field is used
within that same file, so I can't see what related files might use a
particular field!

There is currently no MDM for FM7/8, so what are people doing to
enable them to do these tasks?

Thanks!

I agree that our lack of Metadata Magic is a huge loss. There is
nothing that I feel truly replaces it in FM7+. There are two products
you should check out, though. One that works much like MdM is called
Base Elements <http://www.goya.com.au/baseelements>. Another is called
Inspector <http://www.beezwax.net/inspector/>. Neither are perfect in
their interface, but you can download trial versions of each to see
which you like best.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Howard Schlossberg
FM Professional Solutions, Inc. Los Angeles

FileMaker 8 Certified Developer
Member, FileMaker Business Alliance


Paul Bruneau wrote:

On May 14, 12:06 pm, Howard Schlossberg
<how... (AT) nospam (DOT) fmprosolutions.com> wrote:
Thank you Howard, I'll be sure to check those out.