2EMPowerFM

Products, Plugins & FM hosting/cloud services More...
41

I have no need for Developer Assistant. Our process with FMPerception and FMComparison works so well, there is no need for another tool. Only once in my entire dev career have I needed to do a full scale find-and-replace. But modularity, and FMPerception allow me to control all that.

We can't currently auto-generate our DDR. Since I'm running the DDR locally, and the ODBC connections are not setup, several dialog pop up during the process...it's hard to automate. Our DDR also takes 40 mins to an hour to generate. The Save a Copy as XML takes about 30-45 mins. This is something long term I'm looking to fix, but it's matter of finding the time to pull it off.

1 Like
42

Josh, its great that we all find our own tools that work for us and that we have a number to choose from.

Iā€™ve just literally had to go through a combination of scripts that required me to add some conditions to every ā€˜Set Fieldā€™. All I had to do was to enter ā€˜Set Fieldā€™ into 2empowerFM and it took me to each occurrence so that I could add the conditions in the calculation window. That in itself saves so much time.

As mentioned, we donā€™t use the Advanced version and, like you, have had no need to do find and replace.

2 Likes
43

I agree except for a few points:

  1. Search/Replace is standard expected developer functionality (for most of us)

  2. The 2EmpowerFM adds regular expression search so you can do multiple searches in a single search (using "|") I wish it supported Boolean searches as well. FM Perception only searches for a single word, no regex or Boolean expressions supported. RegEx support really takes the 2EmpowerFM up a notch in my view.

  3. I like FM Perception, and I DO use it, but it's odd to have to generate a file to do analysis on vs. 2EMPower which doesn't require this extra intermediate step (over and over).

FMComparison? Wow, I need to check that out. Good tip!

1 Like
44

I noticed in the 2EmPowerFM eval version I had installed that regex was missing. Did he move that functionality to the advanced version or did I possibly install it incorrectly?

45

You mean that you had crashes with DA? I was all set to buy it. Darn.

I can live with crashes as long as they're quickly fixed by the developer.

46

In our case, the client's DDR takes about 20 minutes to generate and you end up with a 350 MB XML file.

47

Definitely. Hopefully my posts donā€™t sound like Iā€™m discouraging the tools use. Definitely not my intent. I was pointing to just what we do.

We have a bunch of utilities that do stuff like replacing it adding functionality to code.

Copy the whole script, convert to XML, add in whatā€™s missing I replace what we need to, and paste back into FileMaker. That is just one of them.

2 Likes
48

Oliver, is this what youā€™re referring to: 2empowerFM Text Toolkit

49

Find and replace is normal for text based development. I agree. FileMaker kind of does a lot of that for us. I lean on that heavily, so doing a find and replace doesnā€™t have much value and represents a risk. As an example, we make CFs to handle known variables for a lot of stuff. That prevents us from ever mistyping a variable name.

Iā€™m not against it, just have limited value for how we develop.

I havenā€™t tested Developer Assistant since probably 2014-2015. So you will have to rely on others experience with that. I know a LOT of people that use it. Itā€™s not like I hear them complaining about crashes from it.

Our DDR is documentation for us. I can go back and see what a script was at any time to restore if needed. I only run a DDR and Save a Copy as XML when I do a migration from Dev to Prod. Gives us history, a great change log, and easy way to pull out all the changes that may have caused a newly introduced bug. ( FMComparison for the win. When did the bug start? 3 weeks ago? Compare those two files... ah we changed the script parameter 2 weeks ago to and jr dev didnā€™t use the CF he hand typed the variable name wrong ).

1 Like
50

Cool, thanks

51

Nope. If you check out his 7-year old video on the site demonstrating 2EmpowerFM, the presenter demos the Regex checkbox. It's odd though, I didn't see regex checkbox in either the current eval product or in any of the screenshots on the site.

Did he remove that regex functionality?

52

For entertainment purposes only, our current DDR is at 1.15 GB.

53

WOW! That's amazing. :cowboy_hat_face:

54

I just checked our backups too. They are now at 137 GB. Which is a full GB more than it was on Sunday. I think there is an index out of control. LOL

1 Like
55

I found the regular expression capability in 2EmpowerFM. The developer moved it from a check box (as seen on the site's seven-year old video) to the search menu. I actually had to read the documentation to find this. Madness! LOL

image
image430Ɨ722 67.6 KB

I've still not heard back from the developer so support seems to be an issue.

Therefore, since FM Perception has never crashed (truly a great little utility) and their support is just incredible, I'll stick to that I guess.

1 Like
56

I guess I should also highlight that we use both 2empowerFM and FMPerception. Both totally essential to our workflow, not one or the other.

1 Like
57

I don't use RegEx nearly as much as I should. It's one of those powerful but infuriating tools. LOL

1 Like
58

The basics aren't too bad, but when you get to "look-aheads" (positive, negative, forward, backward), it can take a bit if you haven't worked with them in a while.

1 Like
59

Hurray -- I did hear back from 2EmpowerFM today. As they requested, I sent them a crash report. They noted there is a bug in FMP 19.2 that could be causing the problem reported. Once I hear additional details, I'll report back.

1 Like
60

No, I donā€™t have the advanced version. However, the regular version works well for finding specific text. Itā€™s saved me a lot of time when editing scripts.

1 Like