https://help.claris.com/en/pro-help/content/file-consistency.html - Information that FileMaker's consistency checks are not as reliable as the Recovery function—they don't check as much. (Bear in mind that the recovery doesn't even tell you everything on the front end, you have to read the recovery log to get full info.)
This is a work-in-progress inspired by a recent conversation.
In the "separation model" in FileMaker, where data tables live in separate files from an "interface file" containing visual layouts that display the data to the user, used to be widely recommended as a development convention. However, many developers have found that it has significant drawbacks. This is a scratchpad list of those drawbacks as I encounter them.
1. Duplicate relationship graphsIn practice, relationships depend on context, and this is provided by table occurrences that layouts are built on. You may need a portal on a layout... that means the relationship must be in the interface file. But you may have a calculated field in the parent record that counts, summarizes, or otherwise performs an aggregate operation on the related records. That means the relationship must be in the data file. Neither of these is unusual at all. So you…
ExecuteSQL ( "SELECT FieldName FROM FileMaker_Fields WHERE TableName='[TABLE NAME]' AND FieldClass='Normal'",",","¶")
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