This guest post is from David Canton. David is a business lawyer and trade-mark agent with a technology focus at Harrison Pensa LLP. This article contains general comments only, not legal advice. To read the entire series please visit David’s blog David has given us permission to publish this article. Some guest posts contain general advice and tips want to submit your own story or article? Send us an email. The Anti-Spam Act Part 1 of 5 Introduction The Canadian Anti-Spam Act was passed in December of 2010, and is expected to come ... Read More

Mentorship is about experienced individuals sharing their knowledge and information with other less experienced individuals. It’s an opportunity for a mentee to tap into the vast knowledge that a mentor has accumulated over the years. It’s not training however training is a component of mentorship. A mentor normally gives of their time to help guide others to reach their full potential. Through inspiration and guidance they receive their gratification by observing the mentee grow, become successful and achieve their goals. Finding the ... Read More

If you’ve done any object oriented programming in PHP, then you are used to creating class files and having to include them in your webpages. There are a couple of ways you can do this. You could include them all in a header file common to all your pages, but if you’ve got a lot of classes, then you may be pulling in a lot of unnecessary code. Alternately, you could just include the class files that you need on each page – but then it becomes a matter of maintenance if you reference a new class on a page, then have to ... Read More

I recently manned the FileMaker booth at the Gtec tradeshow in Ottawa.  I was wearing both a FileMaker and CoreSolutions hat for this event.  You hear a lot of different conversations. This was FileMaker’s first time at the Ottawa Gtec show.  I was glad to help FileMaker at this show,  and I think the Federal Government and local Ottawa market will provide more business opportunities for FileMaker by repeated forays in the market. Trade shows sometimes have lulls in the action, and during these lulls you hear some interesting ... Read More

One of the principle features of FileMaker Pro 12 is how container fields have been re-engineered, permitting new features when storing files or media inside them. Previous versions of FileMaker permitted audio, video, image or regular files but storing them meant either the file had to be contained within the field or a link could be stored to the file’s location but all users needed to have the same “path” to the file in order to access it. The new improved container fields permit a number of new features. Drag and ... Read More

A recent tribute to Steve Jobs that was posted on the Apple website had a great quote from Wayne Gretzsky – “I don’t go to where the puck is, I go to where the puck is going to be” This quote really resonated with me and with our team here at CoreSolutions, especially around planning/budgeting time for 2013. It is very easy to get caught up in day to day tasks and lose focus on our goals and where we, as a company, and the market are going. In an endless world of more tasks and lists we tend to lose the big picture and forget to ask ... Read More

In my previous post I spoke about how I think Professional Development (hereafter known as PD) should come from a variety of sources.  Now I am going to tackle the next part in my mini feature and discuss the second item which was: ​Professional Development should be self directed Now I am not saying that your managers or employers can’t have a say in the courses or training that you may undertake.  Obviously there are some compliance and mandatory teachings that enable us to do our job better or safer or in some instances, to be ... Read More

Recently I was tasked to design and build a new website for our PD Place product, with the assistance of an in-house developer. Having never built a site of this scale before, it was a bit overwhelming, but I did some research and then got to work. In the event that you are looking to design a new website I would like to share a few things I learned through this project.   Plan, Plan, Plan.Information Architecture is KEY. There is a great quote that says “It’s easier to get to where you are going if you have the set destination in ... Read More

Cross Site Request Forgery (CSRF) is a growing concern for web developers as more and more viruses and malicious scripts are created in an attempt to surpass web based authentication systems. If you don’t know what CSRF is, it is a way of performing a kind of session hijacking, where a malicious pre-defined page request is sent from the user’s computer to a website that they are already logged into. This is able to bypass any server side authentication because the web server views this request as coming from the user, and therefore is a ... Read More

David Allen coined the phrase ‘Getting Things Done’ (commonly called GTD) in a book he wrote by the same name a number of years ago. If you have not read it yet it’s definitely a worthwhile read especially for those of you who feel overwhelmed with the number of tasks you need accomplish. In the book Mr. Allen suggests that you find a single trusted place where you can capture and store everything that needs to get done. His system is very simple and effective and if followed will make you more productive in your day to day work. A brief ... Read More

Most people who want to send page requests from PHP use the cURL library, but making sure that the cURL library is installed on the server is not always possible. You don’t need cURL to make a page request, in fact, in some cases it is just easier to use the built in functionality of PHP. The following code is an example of a very simple page with a single text input and a PHP script that generates a valid HTTP request, sends it to the URL that the user entered, and reads the HTTP standard response code generated by the server that handled ... Read More

There are times when things look like they are in chaos, the details become so overwhelming that the larger picture gets lost – and so does the project. It is common for people to go in to a project with amazing visions in their heads, and all the great things their new silver bullet will do to fix their business – and then reality sets in when their team just can’t put their vision in to action. This is not a failure of the vision, but the method through which its shared with the team: in a grand idea and bite size pieces with details ... Read More

Over the years, there have been a number of different file formats that the various versions of FileMaker Pro have used.  Currently, we at CoreSolutions Software Inc. are only supporting the .fp7 file format which pertains to FileMaker Pro versions 7 through 11.  If you’re using one of the earlier file formats in your database system, I would highly encourage you to upgrade.  There are of course many reasons to upgrade, and these reasons range from richer feature sets, broader compatibility, and even faster development time (which ... Read More

The leaves are falling One by one Summer’s over And school’s begun It was just about this time last year that I wrote a blog  on “Back to school once again”.   And here we are a year later.  How time flies!!!!!   Once again, I had my two kids (well teenagers) stand on the front step for pictures on the first day of school.   As in past years they did so to please me (albeit reluctantly).   It was a sad moment for me, as this will be the last year (I know they were happy to know this) as my son will be off to University next ... Read More

Yesterday in Toronto CoreSolutions co-hosted a FileMaker Go briefing with FileMaker, Inc. I would like to say thank you to Keith Robinson, Mia Roop, and in particular Matt O’Dell who had a splendid presentation and gave us a thorough demonstration of many of the features of FileMaker Go. Thank you also to our own Steve Hearn, who developed a FileMaker Go ‘Sales Module’ that we demonstrated at the event. During the session attendees saw how other organizations are currently using FileMaker Go to boost productivity and they also learned ... Read More

I make lists. I like lists. They keep me organized and help me prioritize my work. They also help me track where my time is going. Recently I have found myself focusing a great deal on my lists. Crossing things off my list has become a large priority. Just yesterday I crossed 6 things off my to do list while at work. I really like the sense of accomplishment that comes from taking my highlighter and marking a list item. Yesterday I noticed that as I was working frustratingly hard to cross a particular item off my list, I was missing the why. I ... Read More

A few months back, I wrote a post about FileMaker’s built in PHP Site Assistant. It’s a handy tool for creating simple sites, but I find it a bit limiting when it comes to creating more complex sites; so I usually tend to write websites in PHP from scratch. It’s actually been possible to do this for a while: around the time FileMaker Pro 5.5 was released, Chris Hansen wrote the first version of FX.php, which was the first solution I found that allowed you to access FileMaker data using PHP. In fact, it’s still around ... Read More

Every time I attend a conference or trade show I always learn something new. In most cases people will come away with lots of ideas and useful information that will help them improve themselves both professionally and as an individual. Sometimes what you see and hear at a conference reaffirms what you are currently doing or gives you that extra push to implement something new. At a recent education conference, the presenter was showing a new system that his IT Department had developed. The system analyzed data that teachers entered and ... Read More

CoreSolutions is pleased to offer our own in-house developed FileMaker Training Courses as well as the FileMaker Training Series (FTS)modules developed by FileMaker Inc. The courses we offer range from the absolute novice with FileMaker such as how to use the basic features of a FileMaker database to building eye catching charts and reports. The FTS modules are designed to cover all aspects and best practices when developing in FileMaker Pro and are highly recommended if you wish to become a Certified FileMaker Developer – just like ... Read More

The benefits of business blogs are numerous. They are a great tool for communicating with customers and for employees to share their expertise on a subject. They work well to build additional web traffic with little direct costs associated. They create a community and grab attention. For these reasons it is no wonder that business blogs are sweeping across the internet. My topic today is a little bit of an aside for myself – as well as offering some (hopefully) useful advice to all of you as well. What happens when you simply can’t think ... Read More

Situations can arise where you need to have a “tough conversation”. It’s a conversation you don’t want to have but may be necessary.  It could be in your personal or work life, but one thing is certain, it’s not an easy task.  Weather you need to tell that client their project won’t be finished on time or you need to tell your roommate you accidentally dropped that special vase her grandma gave her while dusting, it’s difficult to bring yourself to do it. Instead of shying away from it or putting it off until the last minute, ... Read More

Last month I read a great blog post about “Positivity in your Workspace” that you can read here.  It got me thinking about my own workspace and how I can create a “positive” atmosphere.  The blog suggests having pictures or reminders up about your “whys”.  Your “whys” are things that are most important in your life and the goals you want to achieve.  Also, you should have inspirational quotes and iPod playlists that are sure to get you pumped for the day. Well I do have a photo of me and the most important person in my life ... Read More

Criticism. We’ve all faced it in one way or another. But what happens when social media is involved? With the recent logos unveiled by Gap (and we saw how well that went) and Starbucks, it’s been interesting to see how companies are managing the firestorms brought on by Twitter, Facebook, blogs and more. While fake Twitter accounts have popped up to add some levity to the discourse, it seems companies are starting to understand that communication is a two-way street, now more than ever before. It simply doesn’t fly to push ... Read More

When FileMaker Inc. released FileMaker Go for iOS 4 devices in July, it changed things for developers. All of a sudden we had a new platform for which to develop, and one that has unique opportunities and capabilities. It also left many of us scratching our collective heads after we played with it for a while and realized that using the same layouts designed for the desktop version of FileMaker Pro wouldn’t always be practical. I say scratching our heads because it forced us to ask ourselves, how exactly am I going to use this? After playing ... Read More

Have you ever created a FileMaker calculation that was a little complicated but it made sense at the time? And a few months later you look at that calculation again and you can’t figure it out? I have to admit, my memory is pathetic. If I don’t write stuff down or put it in an email, it’s gone by the next day. Same with constructing calculations: if I don’t document them or format them in such a way to make them easier to read, I often can’t understand what the calc does or what I had intended it to do. For years now, the clever ... Read More