Integrating Filemaker with ColdFusion MX via XML

Integrating FileMaker with ColdFusion MX via XML

Ken M. Williams, Richard B. Hallick PhD, Williams J. Grimes PhD, Michael Wells PhD, Madeleine Lapointe MA, Cheryl Ryan, Michael Waggenheim, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona

ABSTRACT:

Over the past year, we have been developing some projects for our Website (The Biology Project, http://www.biology.arizona.edu) using FileMaker Pro. With the release of ColdFusion MX, Macromedia included a powerful and easy to use set of XML tags and functions that allow us to export data from FileMaker Pro databases as XML documents, then interpret and format the data using ColdFusion MX, and return it all to the end user as straight HTML. This approach provides platform and browser independence for both developers (we use FileMaker Pro on a Macintosh G4 server while running ColdFusion MX on Windows 2000 servers) and users. Previous attempts to do this using ODBC were less than successful. Since FileMaker Pro is widely used by many of our faculty, our approach will let us design a web authoring system as a FileMaker Pro application (either web-based or standalone), while allowing us to integrate the generated data into our existing web site structure. We will demonstrate the basic design and functionality of such a system.

BENEFIT TO PARTICIPANTS ATTENDING SESSION:

Over the past 3 years at Slice, we have demonstrated our (sometimes painfully) slow but steady progress in understanding and using XML in various contexts. We feel this particular combination is a very good fit for organizations already using or considering FileMaker Pro as a tool for developing data driven web sites. It should also help to demystify XML.

Ken M. Williams

University of Arizona

Dept. of Molecular and Cellular Biology

Life Sciences South 444 PO Box 210106

Tucson AZ 85721

Phone: 520-621-3624

Fax: n/a

Email: kenw@email.arizona.edu

Website: http://www.biology.arizona.edu

CO-AUTHORS:

Richard B. Hallick PhD

Williams J. Grimes PhD