There may be some unnecessary over-reaction here. It seems to me you're offering an honest description of what you want, which is a good thing in a client (no, I'm not looking for work!). Few gigs show up perfectly aligned the way the book says they should, and anyway, there is no book. 

One of Filemaker's great strengths is its ability, and that of its developers, to tackle unorthodox projects. I suspect many developers on this list have acted as a 'consultant'-- what the subject line says-- to clients who want to do most of the work themselves, either to save money and/or because it's fun; the consultant in turn has the luxury of being compensated for their hard-won expertise while avoiding heavy lifting. It's true such an arrangement can find many ways to go south, but so can well-mapped waterfall, well-managaged Agile, and anything in between projects; with a good client-consultant matchup, this could work out quite happily.

I take Corn's point that there shouldn't be any substantive difference in the quality of the work between someone working on their own or as part of a shop. 

You might also try the Filemaker Experts list, which I believe is a bit larger, as well as FMI's site (http://developer.filemaker.com/search/).

Good luck,

John Weinshel
Datagrace
Vashon Island, WA
(206) 463-1634
Associate Member, Filemaker Business Alliance
Certified For Filemaker 12



From: "Steven J. Messner" <[log in to unmask]>
Reply-To: FileMaker Pro Discussions <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2012 16:39:51 -0500
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Consultant

I will keep your advice in mind. It's never a good idea to ignore a man with strong opinions. (And it's never easy being thoroughly dressed down.)
--steve
On Nov 19, 2012, at 3:28 PM, [log in to unmask] wrote:



From: "Steven J. Messner" <[log in to unmask]>
Reply-To: FileMaker Pro Discussions <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Monday, November 19, 2012 3:51 PM
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Consultant

>>Point taken. Let's hope you're mistaken. Check back with me in a month and I'll let you know how it went. Or maybe I'll be forced to get in touch with you when disaster strikes. -:)

Thanks, but I am retired; well, semi-retired. (This business is like the mob. You can never really get out.)

That notwithstanding, there is no chance I would ever get involved in any job for any amount of money with these kinds of beginning requirements.

Someone is blowing smoke up your dress, trying to sound like they know what they are talking about when they definitely DO NOT. Building a database simply doesn't work that way. What you describe as the "mundane tasks" are not mundane at all. Field definitions, navigation and scripting are the easy parts??? That is certainly news to me after nearly a quarter century in the DB business. And field definitions are not separate from building tables, they ARE the tables!  A database is not something assembled from parts, some made here and others made there. It takes a real top notch project director to coordinate work done by multiple programmers so that it all fits together and works. There are maybe two dozen people in this business all together who can pull that off and clearly, none of them are in your employ.

Now, as I said, I am semi-retired and have no dog in this fight. But if you are smart, you will fire whoever is giving you this extraordinarily bad advice, stop trying to tell developers how to correctly do the job they already know how to do, and let someone like Corn Walker or any of dozens of others on this list tell you the correct way to get where you want to go without being handcuffed by your roadmap. Not only will you get there faster, it will be much cheaper than doing it the wrong way over and over again.

And BTW, if there is ANYTHING I know more about when it comes to FMP programming than just about anyone else in the business, it is navigation. See "AutoNavigator" under the products tab on our web site; I wrote the entire thing. Putting a high quality tab and navigation system into a database is supremely difficult: exactly the opposite of "mundane".

It sounds like Mr. Walker might be willing to take the time to coax you along to a more wise and productive decision and, unlike this grouchy old geezer, do it more diplomatically. That would be one of the smartest decisions you ever made.


David Kachel
Foundation Database Systems
Custom Software Developers

Publishers of:

"AutoNavigator for FileMaker Pro™ "
[An incredible time-saving tool for Developers -
Build tab-sets up to seven levels deep,
up to twenty layouts per level, 140 tabs per layout;
thousands of layouts without writing a single line of code.
To learn more, visit our web site (below).]

"White Paper for FMP Novices" (a free download)
"Database Design for FMP" (a free download)
"Developer Storage" (a free download)
"Universal Capitalizer" (a free download)
"Universal Time Formatter" (a free download)

email: [log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]
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Skype: DavidKachel
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