Skip to Main Content
FileMaker Pro 9: The Missing Manual
book

FileMaker Pro 9: The Missing Manual

by Geoff Coffey, Susan Prosser
August 2007
Beginner to intermediate content levelBeginner to intermediate
799 pages
28h 12m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from FileMaker Pro 9: The Missing Manual

Aggregate Calculations

The min and max functions you learned about on Building the Calculation Fields are part of a collection of functions called aggregate functions. Aggregate functions work differently from other FileMaker functions when you use related fields because they look at all the related records. For example, consider this calculation:

Round(Line Items::Price, 2)

It uses the round function to round a related Price field’s value to two decimal places. If you have three related line item records, this calculation returns the rounded value from only the first record. After all, it really only makes sense to round a single value. But aggregate functions are, by their nature, all about working with lots of values. This calculation returns the largest price across all three related line item records:

	Max(Line Items::Price)

Min and max are two of the most common aggregate functions, but FileMaker offers several, from the obvious, to the obscure, to the unexpected. You can see them all by selecting "Aggregate functions” from the View pop-up menu in the Specify Calculation dialog box.

Numerical Aggregate Functions

The most basic aggregate functions operate on numbers and perform fairly common operations. The common ones include:

  • Min returns the smallest of the values passed to it.

  • Max returns the largest value instead.

  • Average calculates the statistical average of all the values. (In other words, it adds the values, counts them, and divides the total by the count.)

  • Sum adds all the values ...

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Start your free trial

You might also like

FileMaker Pro 10: The Missing Manual

FileMaker Pro 10: The Missing Manual

Susan Prosser, Geoff Coffey
FileMaker Pro 13: The Missing Manual

FileMaker Pro 13: The Missing Manual

Susan Prosser, Stuart Gripman
FileMaker Pro 11: The Missing Manual

FileMaker Pro 11: The Missing Manual

Stuart Gripman, Susan Prosser
FileMaker Pro 14: The Missing Manual

FileMaker Pro 14: The Missing Manual

Stuart Gripman, Susan Prosser

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9780596514136Supplemental ContentErrata Page