Importing from Previous Versions

All of these notes apply to version 2.0 and later of BaseElements only.

Separation Model ( and it's limitations )

In BaseElements 2.x and later, the data that is imported is kept in a separate file from the user interface. This is one of the central ideas of what is called in FileMaker land : "The Separation Model". In theory it allows you to update your interface files without having to re-import all of the data.

Our reasons for doing this had nothing to do with this one particular advantage. We were using this model to allow us to close the UI file during imports to reduce the TO count and make the imports faster. We were hoping that this would also allows to take advantage of the ability to replace only the UI file for BaseElements updates.

Well in all versions from 2.0.0 to 2.6.2, we've only ended up with one change that didn't involve changes to the data file, and thus require importing anyway. So we have made the decision to change what we've published regarding updating to make it simpler.

Updating BaseElements from previous versions

On the "Setup" layout, there is an option to import previous data. This allows you to bring across data from any older versions of BaseElements into the latest version. Click the import button and then select the old BaseElements_2_Data file to import from.

There are limitations to this though. For example, there are new features and changes between BaseElements versions that mean that some data may not have been imported in older versions. This data won't be fixed in an update from previous. However, the data that was there before will still be there, and the record of the old solution will still be relevant for historical purposes.

The alternative is to archive copies of BaseElements ( you can have multiple copies on the one machine, for example one copy for each client etc ). Or if you need to have up to date data from older versions of your analysis, you'd need to import from the XML into the latest version of FileMaker.

This isn't as neat or as simple as replacing the UI file alone, but the reality of development in FileMaker means that there isn't a good long term way to do updating without re-importing the data.