FileMaker Pro 7 , release in March 2004 , was the database app ’s most ambitious rise ever , with the finished product pay off a warm reception from reviewers . But good reviews are n’t everything — real - Earth adoption of FileMaker Pro 7 was boring . average ending - users did n’t care much about the most rotatory features in FileMaker 7 — things like the new relational locomotive , or the ability to put many data tables in a unmarried document filing cabinet . Do - it - yourself developers — the other half ofFileMaker’score market — find the young lineament perhaps a bit too intimidating . in conclusion , there was the fact that convince old result for use in FileMaker 7 was , in many causa , so hard and so expensive that some party and developer just decided to sit that version out .
Enter FileMaker Pro 8 , six month sooner and six way strong than anyone expected . If you ’re still using FileMaker 6 , the time to upgrade is at hand . call up of this late version of FileMaker as the equivalent to the Jaguar update to Mac OS X — this is the really - quick - for prime prison term waiver .
Easy in …
A number of the raw data point - remark features in FileMaker 8 ( $ 299 ; upgrade , $ 179 ) will be familiar to users of other Mac curriculum . automobile - perfect is a common creature in Web web internet browser and in other databases , and now FileMaker Pro has it , too . With the programme ’s new car - terminated feature film , you typecast “ Ze , ” for good example , and FileMaker offers to make out it as “ Zeckendorfer . ”
Another unwashed information - input featuring making its FileMaker debut is visual spell checking , where a squiggly line now seem under potentially misspelled dustup . FileMaker 8 also adds drop - down calendar ( pictured right ) , make it easier than ever for drug user to participate particular date into fields . And for the developer , implement any of these options is a simple issue of clicking on a checkbox in a dialog .
Easy out
FileMaker Pro 8 enter a duo great new way to get data point out of your solution . First , there ’s built - in reinforcement for saving any report or layout to PDF . Users do n’t have to see a exclusive save - as dialog , because the Save as PDF feature article is full scriptable : developers can set thing up so that users need only fall into place on a button to create , say , 100 unlike PDF reports with individual file cabinet names ( with the names coming from appropriate battlefield in the database ) . In a similar vein , you no longer need to export to one data formatting , then import into Excel . FileMaker Pro — which has long been able to read Excel worksheet filing cabinet — can now write them , too .
Even better , FileMaker Pro 8 can now output data immediately to e - chain armor , either as an individual content containing a set of records , or as an tocopherol - chain mail merge that pass to many different receiver . The vitamin E - post address and subject lines can come from fields in the database , and so can the dead body of the substance ; localise up an vitamin E - post selling campaign in FileMaker Pro 8 could n’t get any well-off .
Something shady … er … mousy
Also newfangled in FileMaker Pro 8 is the Fast Match lineament . Right - click ( or control condition - click ) on a field of study and select Find Matching Records from the contextual card ; FileMaker will at once find all the records that match that platter ’s table of contents in that battleground . I ’ve been programming this capability into my databases for twelvemonth and I ’m delight that it ’s now usable everywhere with no more effort on my part .
With this version , FileMaker Pro finally hold up mouse scroll - wheels . Now as it hap , Apple , which owns FileMaker , released a multi - button , scrolling mouse about a calendar month before FileMaker Pro 8 was released , with support for right hand - clicking and mouse scrolling . Coincidence ? You be the judge . In any case , these are modest but worthful sweetening to FileMaker ’s user interface .
Pro for pros
In the end , the really exciting stuff in FileMaker 8 is , once again , for developers . That probably explains why , for the first metre ever , FileMaker used the keynote at the fellowship ’s one-year Developers Conference to free the novel variation . I do n’t think I perceive things this way just because I happen to be a FileMaker developer . I recall it ’s pretty clean-cut that FileMaker is prove to make its package a more serious contender in the rapid - applications - development food market .
In ordination to emphasize both the similarities and differences between the two production , the product formerly known as FileMaker Developer has been rename FileMaker Pro 8 Advanced ( $ 499 ; kick upstairs $ 299 ) . There are a number of major Modern features in FileMaker Pro Advanced — the ability to spell tables and fields from other FileMaker database files , as well as support for copying and pasting fields , playscript and tables ; extensive living for fully customized menus ; and Tooltips ( which users will care , but which have to be configured in FileMaker Advanced ) . Not the least of the changes is the addition of a data point witness in FileMaker Advanced ( show below ) , which lets you monitor any fields or variables you like while you are debug script .
But several new developer - oriented advance are line up even in the standard release of FileMaker Pro . The introduction of variable define inside scripts ( with both local and globular scope ) should obviate 90 percent of the global fields that we have all been relying upon for temporary storage of values . And it further blur the line between FileMaker ’s ScriptMaker and an honest - to - gosh procedural language .
The coolheaded new developer - orient feature article in FileMaker Pro 8 ? Some will say customs duty menus , but I think it ’s got to be tab controls . The tab control tool make an physical object that gives one layout a number of distinct “ layers . ” Each layer or varlet of the tab objective can display its own set of domain . This makes it easy to put a large number of fields on one layout , with one set of drug user - interface buttons and perhaps some vulgar William Claude Dukenfield , but to enshroud and show radical of fields one yellow journalism at a time . It ’s a tremendous place - recoverer and fourth dimension - saver , and beat simpleton to use .
The last word
FileMaker Pro 8 and FileMaker Pro 8 Advanced — both useable now — are square upgrade and then some . When FileMaker Server is released later on this fall , this major contender in the small - to - intermediate - sized database market place will have strengthened its emplacement by strengthening its products both for end - users and for developers .
William Porter is an independent database developer .
