Filemaker Pro is simpler than Microsoft equivalents
First published in Business in Vancouver,
August 14, 2001, Issue #616: The high-tech office column
by ALAN ZISMAN
Last week, we started looking at databases; a
once must-have
product for personal computer users that somewhere along the way
vanished
from most people's desktops.
We looked at Intuit's Quickbase, a database
that, hosted on the
company's Web servers, is easy to create and use and free, at least for
the first three databases per user.
Quickbase is affordable and, being online, accessible
anywhere you have
Web access. But its simplicity can be limiting and online can mean slow
and too often not accessible.
Many people have Microsoft Access and Paradox
database programs,
included in the professional versions of Microsoft Office and Corel
Word Perfect office suites. But the keyword here is professional.
Neither of these products is particularly easy to work with; more
people
own them than use them.
Trying to balance database power with ease-of-use is a
difficult task.
The product that best pulls it off is Filemaker Pro, now with a new
version
5.5 from Filemaker Inc. ($400, $250 upgrades). Although
Filemaker
Inc. is an Apple subsidiary, it's available for both Mac and
Windows.
In fact, version 5.5 runs on Windows 9x, NT and 2000 and natively on
both
the new Mac OS X and classic Mac OS versions.
Filemaker makes it easy to design attractive forms.
Visual layout tools
allow you to drag datafields around the page and add graphics.
Templates
are included to allow for fast start-up and customization. It's also
easy
to import data from other databases or spreadsheets; just drag your
data
file and drop it onto the Filemaker icon. Filemaker data files can be
shared
between the Mac and Windows versions of the programs.
After your data is arranged in an attractive form,
Filemaker offers
many advanced features. While similar features in Microsoft Access or
Paradox
require knowledge of database programming, they are more accessible in
Filemaker. Tables can be linked, mailing labels created, data can be
queried,
and more, all without programming. Relatively simple scripts can be
written,
for example, automatically notifying creditors of overdue accounts.
Note that phrase "relatively simple." While
accomplishing these sorts
of tasks with Filemaker is easier than with Access or Paradox, expect
to
have to put in learning time.
New to version 5.5 is the ability to work with
corporate databases.
Now, it can be used to generate attractive graphics-laden reports from
business data sources using real-time SQL queries. This, along with the
program's network support, may make the new version of Filemaker more
attractive
to the IT departments in large organizations.
As well, Filemaker boasts of its ability to publish
its databases to
the Internet or a corporate Intranet. This, however, is not as easy as
might be hoped. Users cannot simply send their database files to any
Web
host. Instead, the Web server must be running a copy of the $1,500
Filemaker
Server and each data file must be configured to be Web-sharable. Once
that's
done, however, data can be viewed and optionally modified from any
standard
Web browser.
With the $800 Developer version, databases can be
created that can be
accessed by users who don't have a copy of Filemaker; they can add and
modify data, without being able to change the database design. The
ability
to create both Mac and Windows versions of these stand-alone databases
is an added bonus.
Finally, there's an $80 Mobile version, which gives Palm
handheld
users the ability to view and modify Filemaker data.
Trial versions of the basic and server versions are
available for download
from www.filemaker.com.