FileMaker® 12 Developers Reference: Functions, Scripts, Commands, and Grammars

Chapter 8. Calculation Primer

The Calculation dialog in FileMaker serves as a fundamental element in nearly all development activities. Beyond simply defining calculation fields, you also work with the dialog within scripts, for setting some auto-enter field options, for field validation, for tooltips, for conditional field formatting, for charting, and even within a file’s security settings. We encourage all developers to become deeply familiar with calculation functions. To that end, this chapter provides a concise reference of how the dialog works.

The Calculation Function Interface

The Specify Calculation dialog gives developers easy access to the data fields in their solutions and to a complete function list (see Figure 8.1).

Figure 8.1. ...