Final Thoughts on Documentation

This chapter has covered various methods for documenting FileMaker systems. The specifics of the documentation standards you adopt may vary with every project. Ideally, system documentation should contain enough information for another developer to completely re-create the system, using the documentation youve created as his or her only information source. Clearly, maintaining complete and up-to-date documentation is a time-consuming task. Remember that many systems you create will exist longer than expected or perhaps be passed on to other developers. We encourage you to adopt, to the degree pragmatism allows, some of or all the ideas presented here. The result can mean higher quality work and a system that serves its constituents beyond just its initial release.