Filemaker 7

[tace]

COME ON!

Is this a joke? As a database person, I was hoping to have a decent alternative to Access or even Oracle. So, I checked out earlier versions of FileMaker and found them to be as much as a database as dBase was in its earlier version.

Now, they are touting this new version which is finally relational (only 10+ years, too late) and you have to have the $2500 version to be able to use JDBC or ODBC. That's the cost of 17 named user licences for Oracle 9i's Standard Edition One. And you get a million more features, stability, security with Oracle. Granted it is not right to compared the 2 but if you are going to sell a db product for that much money, ... you get what I am saying. I mean Access has had ODBC option forever.

I really wanted to like FileMaker but now, I think they are just a joke.

 

[Snowy_River]

Well, if you need a database, you need a database. Your only real options on a Mac are Filemaker and Unix-based databases. Filemaker, obviously, is much easier to use...

Well, actually, if all you need is a simple database, AppleWorks has a database component built into it. This works great for simple things like recipes for my mom...

 

[Snowy_River]

I used Access on the PC and programmed in it in the past, but I am guessing FM doesn't stack up to it yet.

Do you know why Access isn't available on the Mac anymore? It's because it couldn't compete with FM. While FM has fallen on some harder times recently, it's generally been recongnized as a match for Access. Probably the only reason why Access continued to be prevalent on Windows is because it's packaged with Office...

.... but Access is a kludgy mess....

I couldn't agree more...

 

[Titian]

I am not bothered with Filemaker because anyway I think 4D is far the better database.

 

[Damek]

Solicitation for free advice...

Forgive the plea for free advice, but... I'm a member of a small food cooperative, and we currently don't do any database-type work. We have a small inventory thing someone set up years ago to track orders, but... so far we don't even track our members beyond having a Word DOC listing who they are.

We've talked a few times about how nice it would be to have a database where we could track members, when they pay their dues, maybe relate them to our commitees, and special orders, and, well, a lot of stuff, but the problem is that we have no one experienced in databases. I use one in my day job and am familiar with how they work and have ideas for setting it up, but I've never done it have no programming experience, and no desire to learn anything very in depth.

Is FileMaker 7 maybe something I or another member could learn to use kind of easily? The web site makes it sound that way, but that's marketing, you know.

What I'm thinking after seeing this announcement, though, is that I might be able to use FileMaker 7 to set up a membership database, based on my day-job experience, an inventory database, link them together for member special orders, and even better, publish it on our web site for the scheduling people to access and move people around, change info...

Might this be appropriate for a small business/coop like we are?

 

[nighthawk]

I have been quite impressed with Filemaker 6.0. The company I work for has all user contacts and history in Filemaker... over 35,000 records. It runs slower when there are more than three people logged on, but is almost instantaneous with only three users. Being that I work for a small company, that is not too much of a problem, however I hope that Filemaker 7.0 does improve this a little.

 

[iShater]

The filemaker.com site is incredibly slow today, but I managed to find the answer to my question above. They make the following claim for the FileMaker Server 7 Advanced version:so the Pro, Developer, and regular Server versions apparently do not have JDBC support.

That stinks. I would love to be able to do ODBC calls to it. Oh well, I doubt my dbase will be that complicated to warrant that.

 

[iShater]

Do you know why Access isn't available on the Mac anymore? It's because it couldn't compete with FM. While FM has fallen on some harder times recently, it's generally been recongnized as a match for Access. Probably the only reason why Access continued to be prevalent on Windows is because it's packaged with Office...

I have to disagree with that. It IS an incentive that it is included in Office Pro, but Access has some strengths. It is fully programmable in VBA, which allows you to run fairly complex applications on it. You can use it to interface with other dbases using ODBC, so you don't have to even have the database designed in it or running on it. Its files are widly supported by other applications (as well as Visual Studio, yes a MS product).

I couldn't agree more...

Ok, it can be a pain to use, but it is still a powerful personal database.

Was Access ever available on the Mac?

 

[aquafina]

you'd think they'd have done a better job...

with the website rendering in Safari. Do you think anyone over there actually tested the website on a Mac?

Hopefully their upgraded product looks better than their website (and runs faster).

 

[bousozoku]

Do you know why Access isn't available on the Mac anymore?
...

It was never available on Macintosh.

 

[Nermal]

Has anyone managed to download the trial version? It keeps telling me to enter a password whenever I try.

 

[Snowy_River]

It was never available on Macintosh.

Are you sure about that? I'm pretty sure (but I'm working from memory here, so I freely admit that I could be wrong) that it was part of the Mac office suite for a while, back in the day of Access v1, and maybe v2.

 

[wordmunger]

What I'm thinking after seeing this announcement, though, is that I might be able to use FileMaker 7 to set up a membership database, based on my day-job experience, an inventory database, link them together for member special orders, and even better, publish it on our web site for the scheduling people to access and move people around, change info...

Might this be appropriate for a small business/coop like we are?

I think you're exactly their target market. I used an old version of FM (3? 4?) to track advertisers and subscriptions for a newsletter I used to publish. It wasn't too difficult to learn. If you can handle Excel, you can handle this. I suspect they even have templates that you could adapt quite readily for your purposes.

The second part, publishing on a Web site, would be more difficult, but also doable. Maybe do a two-part phase-in for that.

 

[cello]

Has anyone managed to download the trial version? It keeps telling me to enter a password whenever I try.

I don't even get their promised email with the link in it

 

[iggyb]

Do you know why Access isn't available on the Mac anymore? It's because it couldn't compete with FM. While FM has fallen on some harder times recently, it's generally been recongnized as a match for Access. Probably the only reason why Access continued to be prevalent on Windows is because it's packaged with Office...

Actually, Access was never on the Mac. And the reason it's not today has nothing to do with FM. A few years back, many Mac users were asking M$ to port Access to the Mac, but it couldn't be done. The reason has something to do with the program being so tied into Windows. If the Mac BU of M$ were to release Access, it would have to be re-written from the ground up, and I guess they're thinking the ROI wouldn't stack up.

 

[Dave K]

Forgive the plea for free advice, but... I'm a member of a small food cooperative, and we currently don't do any database-type work. We have a small inventory thing someone set up years ago to track orders, but... so far we don't even track our members beyond having a Word DOC listing who they are.

We've talked a few times about how nice it would be to have a database where we could track members, when they pay their dues, maybe relate them to our commitees, and special orders, and, well, a lot of stuff, but the problem is that we have no one experienced in databases. I use one in my day job and am familiar with how they work and have ideas for setting it up, but I've never done it have no programming experience, and no desire to learn anything very in depth.

Is FileMaker 7 maybe something I or another member could learn to use kind of easily? The web site makes it sound that way, but that's marketing, you know.

What I'm thinking after seeing this announcement, though, is that I might be able to use FileMaker 7 to set up a membership database, based on my day-job experience, an inventory database, link them together for member special orders, and even better, publish it on our web site for the scheduling people to access and move people around, change info...

Might this be appropriate for a small business/coop like we are?

Historically, because I haven't played with FM7, Filemaker has been all about Access like simplicity on the client side.

However, they've purged CDML with this release and moved to XSLT and XML for web publishing. If you're not comfortable with those, but are comfortable with HTML, you may want to look at adding Lasso to the mix as it offers a user friendly tag/script based language and a lot of features to the mix. PHP also had a set of Filemaker DB connectors, however Filemaker has changed how external sources connect, so in both cases you'll need to wait and see what happens on the support front though.

If you expect your site to have more than 5 users at once, you'll also need the Server Advanced version.

 

[legion]

Are you sure about that? I'm pretty sure (but I'm working from memory here, so I freely admit that I could be wrong) that it was part of the Mac office suite for a while, back in the day of Access v1, and maybe v2.

Microsoft Access has never been available for Macs. Access v1 was for Dos and Windows only.

 

[bousozoku]

Are you sure about that? I'm pretty sure (but I'm working from memory here, so I freely admit that I could be wrong) that it was part of the Mac office suite for a while, back in the day of Access v1, and maybe v2.

100 percent sure of it. It had been developed and was ready to be deployed by Microsoft but Apple asked them to make FileMaker the database of choice on Macintosh and to provide linkage in Word and Excel to access FileMaker.

I bought MS Access version 1.0, which was available for MS Windows 3.x only. It used an engine based on FoxBase Pro, a dbase clone, which MS had recently acquired in order to compete with Borland's Paradox which was being re-developed for Windows.

 

[legion]

Actually, Access was never on the Mac. And the reason it's not today has nothing to do with FM. A few years back, many Mac users were asking M$ to port Access to the Mac, but it couldn't be done. The reason has something to do with the program being so tied into Windows. If the Mac BU of M$ were to release Access, it would have to be re-written from the ground up, and I guess they're thinking the ROI wouldn't stack up.

The Jet Database Engine is the problem. It would have to be completely rewritten and once done, there wouldn't be cross-compatiblity between MS Access for Windows and Access for Mac projects so it seems like a useless idea for MS to port Access (and I'd have to concurr)

As for FM and Access being on par with each other.. maybe the last time that was true was around Access 2.0; for quite a while Access has outclassed FM and has been trying to compete with the big boys (Oracle.) Access works great as an intermediary to Oracle DBs, but for sheer data handling, it isn't anywhere near as efficient though programing modules is extremely easy and setting up automated tasks is easier than Oracle's solutions.

 

[Damek]

Historically, because I haven't played with FM7, Filemaker has been all about Access like simplicity on the client side.

However, they've purged CDML with this release and moved to XSLT and XML for web publishing. If you're not comfortable with those, but are comfortable with HTML, you may want to look at adding Lasso to the mix as it offers a user friendly tag/script based language and a lot of features to the mix. PHP also had a set of Filemaker DB connectors, however Filemaker has changed how external sources connect, so in both cases you'll need to wait and see what happens on the support front though.

If you expect your site to have more than 5 users at once, you'll also need the Server Advanced version.

Thank you very much for your response. We're very tiny and don't have much money on hand, so I'll probably attempt to trial it and see how much I can learn in 30 days... the web thing may be beyond me at the moment, I'm most comfortable with HTML and have never learned PHP, and Lasso looks way too expensive. But if it allows us to do anything more advanced and more useful than we do now, I might buy a copy and donate it to the group... If I can't do a trial, I'll just shelve the idea until I can afford to spend the money just to try it. It's good to know there are options out there besides Access, and which might be easier to use than Access, too.

 

[Damek]

I think you're exactly their target market. I used an old version of FM (3? 4?) to track advertisers and subscriptions for a newsletter I used to publish. It wasn't too difficult to learn. If you can handle Excel, you can handle this. I suspect they even have templates that you could adapt quite readily for your purposes.

The second part, publishing on a Web site, would be more difficult, but also doable. Maybe do a two-part phase-in for that.

Thank you for your response, too

I have a feeling I'm they're target market, too... just like Apple to make the hard stuff easy for us non-programmer types. Well, easier. Easy would be just telling the computer what I want and having it do it

 

[rlw]

I recommend it for what you need.

We've talked a few times about how nice it would be to have a database where we could track members, when they pay their dues, maybe relate them to our commitees, and special orders, and, well, a lot of stuff, but the problem is that we have no one experienced in databases.

Is FileMaker 7 maybe something I or another member could learn to use kind of easily?

I was in a similar situation and bought Filemaker last year. I have zero database and zero programing experience. After completing all lessons in the included tutorial (about 4 hours total), I was able to make a simple Database for my company (about another 4 hours).

Another option: You might look into buying one of Filemaker's "solutions" in addition to Filemaker (they work together). There is one specifically for non-profits that may work for you (saving you the need to create your own, and it would probably be better/do more).

http://www.filemaker.com/nonprofit/

 

[EdMan517]

FileMaker is Excellent for certain needs

I have been developing on FileMaker for my company since 1997. It has been a relational database that whole time (as others have said, since 3.x). I have many, very complicated relational calculations which help our company to provide clients with VERY useful evaluation reports and needs assessments for their continuing education programs.

AND it is very easy to learn. It is very easy to create your fields. It is very easy to develop layouts that can provide great user interfaces. It also has its own scripting language that is easy to pick up on - even if you haven't programmed before.

I don't have much experience with web development and FileMaker Pro, but I know it has its limitations and that CDML (FileMaker's adapted HTML language) is not that great. It's ODBC capabilities have not seemed up to par either.

However, I still love FileMaker. It works very well for single users, or multiple users in peer-to-peer mode, or while using FileMaker Server. I cannot really vouch for any uses beyond that.

Just felt I had to post something positive after seeing many people bashing it and using some very generic negative statements.

At a cursory glance, the many of the new features seem like they will be a great improvement to an already good database application.

My 2 cents...

Ed (pining for a PowerBook...)
---
DP 867 G4 - OS 10.3.2
Dell Dimension 8200 - Windows XP Prof

 

[JtheLemur]

boooo! On an 867MHz Quicksilver with 1GB of RAM, the demo is a bit pooookey... even opening one of their free solutions files with no data in it! Bummer!

 

[GregA]

WebObjects & Cocoa

I have 3 questions for anyone who might be in the know

1) Is FM7 written in Cocoa now?
I'm actually wondering about cocoa and the Windows platform.

2) Have FM used anything from WebObjects?
Back when Apple and Next merged I figured the WebObjects group might takeover Filemaker. With the prices of Filemaker 7 Server, maybe the opposite is true. Is there synergy there?

3) Does the underlying database relate to the OSX 10.4 database file system rumours?
Actually... I'll ask that in the 10.4 thread instead - link through here:
https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=743106#post743106

Thanks