Show Values Only From Second Field

Estimated Time To Read This: 2 – 4 minutes

It’s a common trick in FileMaker Pro to use a value list comprised of both one visible, and one hidden field in order to achieve ease-of-use for the end-user, and still be able to maintain good relational integrity. Value lists like this make perfect sense when the value you’re picking from will be used to form a relationship.

Any of you who use FileMaker might have seen this in action when picking an item from a drop-down. Usually, the items you’re picking from make sense to you, but after picking it you might see something cryptic looking entered into the field for you –> this is the ID for the entry in the value list that represents the record that you selected.

It’s not uncommon for developers to take this to the next level though, and attempt to try to hide the record ID from the end-user’s view. This is typically done by stacking another (non-enterable) field on top of the one that you clicked into. The new field that rests on top will look through the newly formed relationship, and will display the same value that you actually clicked on within the value list. It’s possible though, that there might be a detrimental performance impact to handling things this way (albeit minor in most cases). The reason I’m suggesting this is because every time FileMaker references a field, it actually pulls data from every field (unstored fields and containers excluded) within the record or recordset that you’re referencing. This means that an extra record of data gets pulled down just so that the field overlay can be displayed for aesthetic purposes. It might be more efficient to stack a non-enterable field from the current record’s table on top. This can be done using a duplicate copy of the same field that the user is clicking into, marking it as non-enterable, and changing the value list style from drop-down to pop-up (Pop-ups will only display the second field used in the value-list, and keep the record ID hidden from view). Of course, you might need to play with some of the line settings etc. too.

Is this how you’re displaying your value lists too?

Have you tested this theory empirically?

Let us know!

PS –> Mark Richman of Skeleton Key put together an excellent presentation for FileMaker DevCon 2010 called Developing For Maximum WAN Performance where he discussed how data gets sent from server to client. He was interviewed at the conference, and you can watch a video of that interview here.