Getting Out What You Put In

Much of this book concentrates on tools for data entryfor getting data into a database system. But that information often needs to be extracted again. Sometimes the extraction takes the form of a report of some kind. At other times the best choice is simply to export the data into some specific format so that another program can import that data and work with it using different tools than might be available in FileMaker. Reasons for exporting might include the following:

• Perhaps you know someone who is compiling a quarterly report in Excel and needs some numbers from your FileMaker system.
• Perhaps the new accounting system needs transaction data from FileMaker, and likes to receive it in an XML format.
• Perhaps you've been storing low-resolution images for an upcoming ad campaign in FileMaker, but you would like to make all the images available on a CD that can be used without FileMaker.

In this chapter we cover various means for getting data out of FileMaker. We discuss the traditional concept of exporting to other file formats, and we also cover the related topic of making FileMaker data available via an ODBC or JDBC connection. There are still other methods of extracting data from FileMaker, such as various web publishing methods, and the new Save Records as Excel and Save Records as PDF features, all of which are covered fully in other chapters.