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Documenting database schemas (FileMaker Pro Advanced)

Use the Database Design Report feature to document the schema of your database and publish it in to an HTML or XML file.

With the Database Design Report, you can:

•	produce reports for any databases that are currently open, either locally or on a network

•	gather statistics on the structure of your database

•	use the information in the report to recreate the structure of your database if you lose the original database files

•	examine a textual representation of your database schema

•	choose which elements (fields, relationships, scripts, and so on) and tables of the database to document

•	troubleshoot missing references, broken relationships, calculations, and more

A Database Design Report in HTML format includes a Report Overview that provides a snapshot of the elements in each database file. The Report Overview contains hyperlinks to details about all elements in each database file. The HTML version of the report is hyperlinked and you can view or print it in a Javascript-enabled web browser.

A Database Design Report in XML format contains the same information, ready to be transformed into the format you require. You can create tools that can use the Database Design Report XML to analyze or process the structure of databases. For more information, download the FileMaker Pro Advanced Database Design Report XML Output Grammar PDF, available at www.filemaker.com/documentation.

To create a Database Design Report:

1.	Open all database files for which you want to produce a Database Design Report.

You must have full access privileges for any file for which you want to produce a Database Design Report and the file must be open in FileMaker Pro Advanced. You can run a Database Design Report on local or remote files.

2.	Choose Tools menu > Database Design Report.

3.	In the Available Files list, clear any files that you want to exclude from the report by clearing the checkbox associated with the file.

4.	If there are any files that contain tables that you want to exclude from the report, select the file in the Available Files list.

The tables in the file appear in the Include fields from tables in selected file list. You can then deselect any table in the list.

By default, all tables in all selected files are reported.

5.	From Include in report, clear elements that you want to exclude from the report.

By default, all elements in all selected files are reported. Each selected element, if present, will be reported on for each selected file.

6.	If you prefer to publish the report in XML format instead of the default HTML, select XML in the Report Format section.

7.	If you do not want the report to automatically open when done, clear Automatically open report when done in the File Handling section.

8.	Click Create.

Notes

•	You can search the HTML report for the following text to locate problems:

•	Missing Field

•	Missing Table Occurrence

•	Missing Base Table

•	Missing Data Source

•	Missing Layout

•	Missing Value List

•	Missing Custom Function

•	Missing Script

•	Missing Account

•	Missing Privilege Set

•	Missing Extended Privilege

•	Missing Custom Menu

•	Missing Custom Menu Set

•	If you have any inactive accounts that have a blank password, the HTML report displays a password mask ******. In the XML report, the emptyPassword="" node will report FALSE. To get accurate password information from these inactive accounts, make the accounts active and choose View Source.

•	Mac OS: To view an HTML report, use web browsers such as Safari, Mozilla, and Firefox. Internet Explorer for Mac OS is not supported.

•	Mac OS: To view an XML report in Safari, open the file in Safari, then choose View menu > View Source.

•	The Database Design Report feature creates XML files in UTF-16 format. To view a report in this format, use a text editor or web browser that supports UTF-16 text.

•	The Database Design Report catalogs and reports information about any ODBC tables that are used in the relationships graph.

FileMaker Pro Advanced may not be available in all of the shipping languages of FileMaker Pro.

Related topics 

Copying or importing table schemas (FileMaker Pro Advanced)

Protecting databases