This question is very specific for the scripting definition of database-application FIleMaker Pro [Advanced] but perhaps someone here can help me out anyway.
When using two different ways to update a value in a field on a record in FileMaker Pro, two different results are returned and I´m curious to why.
Method one
tell application "FileMaker Pro Advanced"
tell database "AppleScriptTest"
tell table "Person"
tell (every record whose ID = 1)
set cell "Company Id" to "5"
end tell
end tell
end tell
end tell
Method two
tell application "FileMaker Pro Advanced"
tell database "AppleScriptTest"
tell table "Person"
tell (every record whose cell "Person Id" = 3)
set cell "Company id" to "5"
end tell
end tell
end tell
end tell
Notice the ways the records are identified. Method one identifies a record using the internal readonly value RecordId. Method two uses a database column (a field) value to identify a record.
Method one returns
{application "FileMaker Pro Advanced"}
to my AppleScript editor. Method two returns nothing. Both methods seems to work fine and the values are updated in the database.
Does anyone know the reason for diference in results returned? Also, is there any benchmarking done as to which method is the faster one? I read that the FileMaker scriptable handler “Show” dont use indexes and thus are very slow on larger datasets. I wonder if method two uses index which would make it a good choice when updating many records with the same identifier?
But my main question is: should I be worried about the returned value of method one? Do I need to handle it in AppleScript in some way?