When it comes to database systems on the Mac, FileMaker Pro (FMP) is the undisputed market leader. For more than twenty years FileMaker has sold its system and slowly improved it. It has also tread a careful line between ease of use for the beginner and power for developers as it has added features. I’m a huge fan of FileMaker Pro — I’ve been using it for close to twenty years.
FileMaker Pro is probably the best database system on any platform for developing solutions for home and business. In the hands of a professional it is possible to build software systems that are both powerful and easy to use very quickly. At the same time it is possible for the average Mac user to create quite powerful and sophisticated tools themselves.
With FileMaker Pro you can build a database from scratch, import an Excel spreadsheet, a text file or even a database from Bento, the even simpler database application from FileMaker. FileMaker Pro also comes with a number of templates ready for you to use or modify. FMP is often a faster way of getting a database application up and running than using tools such as Microsoft SQL or Oracle. FMP solutions can scale up from a few to dozens of users once you include a copy of the Server version.
Keeping up. It seems every time I go and upgrade my copy of FileMaker Pro, the company sneaks another release out and I’m behind a version again. It’s starting to get annoying. I sometimes wonder if it’s worth it to upgrade to every version.
The “big ticket” feature with this new version is built-in charting. While the ability to create charts has been available using third-party plugins, having the feature built in to the core of FileMaker Pro allows it to be easy to use and quite powerful. You can even use the web publishing feature to push your charts out to the web.
The first chart I created was easy. The second, an attempt to create a chart from summary data, was much more difficult. Several attempts were unsuccessful,l but searching the extensive help provided in FileMaker Pro found me a short tutorial and then I created my chart without too much trouble at all. This was quite common while writing this review — FileMaker Pro has an extensive set of help files, tutorials and examples. That said, creating the perfect chart may take some practice and trial and error.
As useful as charting is the “Quick Reports” feature. While FileMaker Pro has always had an excellent system for creating reports fairly easily, it has never been as easy as using a spreadsheet — one of the reasons many people still use one instead of a database. If this describes you then you will love Quick Reports. It can be summed up as “your database in a spreadsheet-like layout” — you can hide and show fields and sort by fields. At the same time you can use the power of a database and easily group and summarise records; all in an easy to use interface.
Once you start using Quick Reports you find more and more functionality hidden behind a simple interface. For example, you can click and drag columns to change the field order, which is useful when you discover that you can sort by multiple columns so long as they are adjacent — just select multiple columns and records are sub-sorted by the selected fields, left to right. Finds are done by putting the data into the field; FileMaker Pro will remember recent finds and allow you to save a find. You can invert the current find with a single click on a green button and show all records is an obvious button.
Finally, FileMaker Pro 11 adds a “Quick Find” that searches in all fields and works from Browse mode. This will make life a lot easier for the beginner. No more worrying about the mode you are in or searching in the right field. Given that it is searching all fields it is surprisingly fast, finding 350 records in 22,000 was only a couple of seconds.
At the user level they are the big three new features. The “Snapshot Link” feature falls into the power-user category. Beginners may not realise the usefulness but when you have used it a few times the benefit will be obvious. This feature allows you to capture a view of your database and export it as a found set that includes the sorting and layout viewable in another copy of FileMaker Pro. Since this is within Filemaker pro the data is even up to date. Of course the down side is that the other person needs a copy of Filemaker Pro of their own.
For the big kids. At the designer level there is an enhanced layout/report assistant with a much improved interface for building more complex reports such as those with grouped data.
There is also an improved layout inspector that has a similar design to one found in a word processor. You can even have more than one inspector to, for example, display each of the panes dedicated to appearance, position or data. A huge improvement on the dozens of little dialogs we used to have to wade through.
For the developer there are some good additions to the feature list. My favourite is the ability to group layouts in the layout menu into folders, avoiding those long lists of layouts often found in large FileMaker Pro systems.
For far too long FileMaker developers have been using any number of hacks to get a selected set of records into a portal. Now FileMaker has delivered with portals filtered on calculations rather than such tricks as complex joins. A small but useful and welcome change.
Script triggers were one of the biggest features introduced in version 10 and several new triggers have been added to 11, including entering and leaving layouts and validating fields. Improved workflows and debugging for developers can also be found in this new version.
Taken as a whole this feels like a good set of improvements to an already powerful application. If you have a complex system built in version 10 or a large number of users, it may not be enough to convince you to upgrade. But if you are using version 9 or earlier then I would certainly be upgrading. For those looking for a database system that is both powerful and easy to use, FileMaker Pro 11 is a highly recommended choice.
The one thing really missing from this version is an iPhone/iPad client. If FileMaker can make one for Bento then surely it can do something for FileMaker Pro users. There is a third-party application, FMTouch, that allows you to use your FileMaker Pro database on an iPhone, but the process of setting it up is a little cumbersome and you have to go through a few hoops every time you change your database.
My biggest complaint. As someone who has paid for the upgrade from 7 to 8, then 8 to 9, then 9 to 10, I find it disappointing that FileMaker will charge me exactly the same to upgrade to 11 as someone upgrading straight from version 8. Surely FileMaker, your loyal customers deserve better than this?
