dacs.doc electric

One of the fastest growing database applications is FileMaker Pro. It is the number one database app on the Mac and number two on the PC. It may well be the number one database on the PC as well, but Access is bundled with Office, so actual use is difficult to determine.

The presenters were Jane LaFrance, Business Account Manager, and Tony Miller, Systems Engineer. Tony presented with Jane interjecting now and again. I think if we had two mikes working, the presentation would have been a bit more lively since Jane wanted to do more talking.

They started with a slideshow that presented information about FileMaker, Inc. and its current direction. It was interesting to see how FileMaker Pro fit into the corporate environment. In the past, FileMaker Pro has been end-user friendly but not friendly in IT environments. In other words it did not share or exchange data very well with other systems.

Since IT departments are stressed with an abundance of work, end-user development of database applications are on the rise and Filemaker Pro allows workgroups to provide self-service rapid application development. Also, the application is now Windows 2000 logo-certified and runs on many platforms; Web, Windows, Mac OS 9, Mac OS X, Linux, Windows 2000 Terminal Services, Citrix MetaFrame, Palm and others.

FileMaker’s new features that allow it to mix well with enterprise solutions include record level security and 2-way dynamic ODBC and SQL queries (interface with systems like Oracle and Microsoft’s SQL Server). We got to see a demo that updated an SQL Server directly within a FileMaker database. This was actually very impressive and opened the doors to many ideas.

One of the coolest functions demonstrated was Instant Web Publishing. The layouts and database you create can now instantly, with a few mouse clicks, be view by anyone on your intranet or even over the Internet if you have the physical connection. All this can be done with almost an exact representation of the actual FileMaker layouts. You can even add and edit records via a web browser.

Another great feature is the ability to drag and drop Microsoft Excel documents right into FileMaker. Now you have your data in a real database and you even get a table layout that is very similar to columns in Excel.

Tony’s final presentation was a demo on FileMaker Mobile. You can create a subset of your database that runs on the Palm OS. The possibilities here are tremendous. Your data can actually be input and edited on a Palm then Hotsynced to update your main database.

Overall it was a good presentation that ended with a Question and Answer period.

Thank You, FileMaker.