FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
WAVES IN MOTION RELEASES ANALYZER 2.0 FOR FILEMAKER PRO
Extensive customer feedback pushes development tool to new . . . depths
Contact:
Vince Menanno
Phone: 602-956-7080
Fax: 602-956-6754
E-mail: info@wmotion.com
Web: http://www.wmotion.com
PHOENIX. February 15, 2000. Ask a room full of typically vociferous
FileMaker developers what they like least about their job, and most will
tell you it’s the prospect of making changes to projects with hundreds or
even thousands of elements, countless cross references, and no
documentation. Then present them with a development tool to help them
through these problems, and they’ll let you know quickly how you can make
that better, too.
“When we first developed the Analyzer two years ago, it was based primarily
on my experience developing and documenting large FileMaker projects and my
frustration with FileMaker’s limited development tools,” says Vince
Menanno, president of Waves in Motion. “And being the only FileMaker
developer who got to use it did give me a certain competitive advantage!”
By releasing the Analyzer as a commercial product, Vince may have given up
that edge, but the development community has repaid him in kind. “The
feedback on the Analyzer has been incredible,” he says, “with lots of
amazing feature suggestions and a great public beta. Waves in Motion built
version 1.0, but version 2.0 was really built by our customers,
professional FileMaker developers.”
Version 2.0 of the Analyzer now digs even deeper into your FileMaker
projects, clearly and automatically documenting every field, every layout,
every relationship, every value list, and every script . . . all bundled
together with a host of customer-driven improvements:
— 300% increase in the speed of processing and interpreting large projects
— extensive hotlinking between the different parts of the Analyzer’s
project database
— improved script tracing
— broader search capabilities and reporting features
— expanded information gathering, including every aspect of every field in
a project
One of the most innovative features in version 2.0, and one that will
appeal to anyone responsible for large FileMaker projects, is the small,
but powerful Problem Dot. The Analyzer now automatically searches through
all the scripts in a project and marks any file containing an error,
including such things as broken relationships, missing fields, and missing
layouts. Click on a file name and you’ll find another Problem Dot next to
each problem script. Click on a script and continue to follow the dots
straight to the bugs.
You can even move through scripts step by step, or let the Analyzer trace
through an entire script for you and build a hierarchical report of every
instruction, every external script, and every recursion it finds. These
trace reports are even color-coded to help you better see just what is
going on.
You can generate a Problem Report that summarizes all the problems found by
the Analyzer, or perform your own customized searches across all the files
in your project. Search for a field name, a status function, or any of the
standard FileMaker terms built into the Analyzer search engine. Or search
through all the scripts in a project for outdated procedures or elements
that no longer exist.
Developers can also use the Analyzer to generate summarized or detailed
project reports. To choose one example: the detailed report for a
particular field includes a list of all the layouts that include the field,
every script that uses the field, every relationship that references the
field, and every calculation that requires a value from that field. The
Analyzer indicates the type for each field, if a field is indexed or not,
and the number of repetitions for each field. For calculation fields,
Analyzer displays the calculation and the field type returned by the
calculation.
With all this information gathered together, the Analyzer is also the
perfect tool for documenting your projects. You can add comments anywhere
in the project database generated by the Analyzer or easily copy the
information you need into your own reports.
The more complex the project, the greater the need to organize the work,
document the elements, and analyze the flaws. Even the most experienced
FileMaker developer will save valuable time and effort with a tool like
this.
The Analyzer requires the U.S. version of FileMaker Pro 5.0 running under
Mac OS 8.5 or better. You can purchase the Analyzer online for $239.00 US
from the Waves In Motion website, or upgrade your current copy for $79.00.
(http://www.wmotion.com/products.html)
For all their products, Waves In Motion offers a demo version you can try
before you make your purchase. The demo version of the Analyzer allows you
to try out all the features in the application, but does not allow you to
save your work.
Waves in Motion is the developer of a growing collection of FileMaker
solutions and plug-ins, including Script Scheduler, oAzium Charts,
DocuScript, and The Dragon Web Surveys. They are active members of the
FileMaker Solution Alliance and the Apple Developer Program, and have been
consulting and developing FileMaker solutions since 1990.