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Fans of relational databases will find a lot to smile about in the latest release of FileMaker Pro. The program, long a favorite of Mac users, simultaneously released last week a new version of the data crunching powerhouse for both OS X and Windows.
"This is a pretty significant release in the sense that there's a lot going on in it," FileMaker Group Product Manager Rick Kalman told MacNewsWorld.
Databases at FileMaker's level of sophistication and muscle can be challenging for many information massagers, but the application has earned a reputation over the years as one that allows its adherents to be productive as soon as they boot up the software. That approach has made the program particularly popular among small businesses, which represent about 40 percent of its users.
"FileMaker is something where knowledge workers are able to self-serve and build things themselves," Kalman noted.
For Mac owners, this release of the database, version 11, has singular significance. ""FileMaker Pro 11 is now a native Cocoa application," Kalman said. "A lot of the things that Bento is able to do with being able to tap into rich media sources are things that we can potentially do with FileMaker going forward." Bento is FileMaker's Mac-only personal information manager.
Better Charts
Atop the list of enhancements in this version of the program is its new charting capabilities. Pie, bar and area charts can be created instantly and will change dynamically as the data underlying them changes. "Anywhere where you would typically do reporting or finding data in FileMaker, you can now associate that data very easily with a chart," Kalman noted.
An early tester of the application, Ken Grindall, the IT Director for Scientific Applications & Research Associates in Cypress, Calif., raved that the new charting features added a whole other dimension to his company's project management reports.
"[It] allows us to visually communicate projected resource needs to better manage labor," he said. "Even user statistics for our IT systems are more meaningful when rendered in chart form."
"Certain data calls out for record-by-record comparison," he added, "but other data sets are just a blur until placed into the visual context made possible with a chart."
Quick Searching
Taking a page out of iTunes' book of features, FileMaker 11's designers incorporated a "Quick Find" addition into the program. It allows a user to search through all the fields in the database without constructing elaborate queries.
"What we are doing is searching across all the fields on the layout simultaneously while in browse mode and returning the results," Kalman explained.
Although the default setting for Quick Search includes all fields, the feature can be customized to exclude fields and make a search even faster.
Another early tester, Bryce Bartley, a programming analyst with Whole Foods in Austin, Texas, found Quick Search very useful. "With large files covering tons of products and ingredients, it has been a hassle in the past using scripts to search multiple fields for the same criteria," he said. "With this new feature, we have one universal place in every file that we can use to find whatever we need."
Teaching Users to Fish
True to its "productivity out of the box" attitude, FileMaker 11 includes more than 30 "Start Solutions" that address the kind of real-world information needs for which business people buy a database.
"One of the things we know about customers when they first come to a database, they come with a specific task in mind," FileMaker's Kalman observed.
"Start Solutions are templates for some of the common things that you'd do in a database so you don't have to build it from scratch or you can begin to explore what's possible with FileMaker," he added.
Solutions are designed as simple as possible so they can be used immediately, but they can be customized to suit a user's needs. "We wanted them to be fully functional out of the box, but we wanted to teach users to fish, too," Kalman explained, referring to the adage, "Give a man a fish, and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and you have fed him for a lifetime."
Dynamic Linking
Two other new features in the database software are Snapshot link and Recurring Import.
Snapshot allows a user to flag a set of records and treat them as a mini-database. The information in the snapshot remains linked to the information in the main database. So the snapshot can be shared, but any time it's changed, all copies of the snapshot are changed.
Recurring Import allows FileMaker databases to be hot linked to Excel, CSV and TAB files. "The data lives in Excel but once I link to it I can use it in FileMaker just like I would if the data were natively in FileMaker," Kalman explained.
All told, four versions of FileMaker 11 were released for Windows and OS X: FileMaker 11, US$299 retail, $179 upgrade; FileMaker 11 Advanced, $499/$299; FileMaker 11 Server, $999/$599; and FileMaker 11 Server Advanced, $2,999/$1,799.
