BIOS: Technology Means Business

FileMaker is an extremely rich and mature database platform for small- and medium-size businesses. Usability enhancements are compelling enough to pique the interest of end-users and it's a snap to use, but serious developers looking for the richness of a full VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) development environment, direct access to SQL queries, and lots of scalability options should opt for Microsoft's Access 2003. Having said that, Microsoft's market-leading program is more complex and daunting to less experienced developers. So, while FileMaker Pro 8 lacks some of the developer-oriented features of Access, it's one of the easiest-to-use individual or workgroup database solutions.

Pros: Easy to setup and use; PDF maker; saves to Excel files
Cons: Not as powerful as Access; no variables in custom dialog buttons

FileMaker Pro 8 is the newest version of FileMaker's flagship desktop relational database. The upgrade offers new ways to work faster, share and manage more information types, and allows you to be more productive. In addition to FileMaker Professional 8 reviewed here, the software is also available as FileMaker Server 8 Advanced (aka FileMaker Developer, £379 ex. VAT) and FileMaker Mobile 8 (£49.95 ex. VAT) which synchronises with PDAs running Windows Mobile or Palm OS.

FileMaker Pro 7, which shipped in March 2004, was a major leap forward, providing breakthroughs in efficiency and power for developers from enhancements in the database engine. Having achieved that, the design goals of FileMaker Pro 8 - to share more and work faster - are targeted at knowledge workers, database creators, and database users. If you look across the broad scope of features, there's just so much that's new in FileMaker 8: PDF writing capabilities and Excel support, for example. Thankfully, FileMaker 8 uses the same file format as FileMaker 7, and thus, its files are backward compatible.

FileMaker is an easy-to-use program that allows you to manage contact and customer details, access project status and tasks, track inventory, products, and assets, as well as organise pictures and video. Indeed, we created a database - along with tables, fields, and validation - in just a few minutes. Business users will also appreciate its ability to print invoices, letters and mailing labels, produce reports in PDF and Excel (XLS) formats, create customised electronic forms, e-mail the contents of virtually any field (though the resulting e-mails are text-only, not HTML), publish your product catalogue to the Web, as well as share data with Windows and Mac users.

A key strength of the software is its ability to customise databases to work the way you do. For instance, you can use built-in assistants for easy customisation of screens and reports, drag-and-drop objects where you want them (such as your company logo), create your own views of the data specific to each person's preference, design layouts with tabs, link information with a point-and-click, manage large tables and numerous relationships between data, and choose from time-saving functions including calendar drop-downs.

The new PDF maker feature lets you convert reports into PDFs, which can be e-mailed for sharing with non-FileMaker users. The new Excel Maker works the same way. FileMaker Pro 8 users can save data as a Excel file, and just as easily include it as an attachment ready to send via e-mail. Other key new features include the ability to select information from the current field, and with a single mouse click, find all matching records to refine your search or broaden it without typing.

You can now e-mail the contents of virtually any field, including images, documents and Excel files from within FileMaker, and you can get faster and more accurate data entry by adding the ability to fill-in field content automatically based on previous entries or Value Lists. The calendar field lets you enter dates quicker by adding a simple point and click calendar drop-down to any field, and the e-mail merge function lets you send personalised e-mails to individuals or groups.

We also really liked the new Find Matching Records command that lets you find all the records that have exactly the same data in the same field, without having to enter Find mode. You can now enter dates by clicking on a day in the calendar instead of typing numbers, slashes, and four-digit years, and there are a number of neat shortcuts that make finding dates and date ranges easier. For instance, you can now find all the records with dates in July 2005 by searching for '7/2005' rather than '1/7/2005 to 30/07/2005'.

The Tab Panel Control lets you build a layout with multiple tabs in a single step rather than having multiple layouts each with their own tabs, and the visual spelling checker checks spelling of data entry by using a red underline to highlight suspect words in real-time, instead of just beeping at you as you type. Finally, mouse wheel support lets you scroll through records or fields faster and easier using a mouse-wheel (including Apple's new Mighty Mouse), add a new table to a database by simply importing the new data, as well as create and manage tables and associated relationships more easily.

FileMaker Pro 8 Advanced adds more powerful new features designed to allow advanced users and developers to add greater customisation to their databases, such as full-blown menu customisation, custom tooltips, custom right-click context menus, and reporting enhancements. FileMaker Pro 8 Advanced also includes an enhanced script debugger with capabilities such as a watch window, stack traces, and the ability to disable individual script steps. [8.5]