What is Claris FileMaker Pro 3.0 (DS, HD) (CD)?

FileMaker Pro has developed an outstanding reputation over the years as a database for mere mortals, not just programmers. Year after year, it has scored well with end users, more on the strength of its usability than on its power. Building on this legacy, FileMaker Fro 3.0 offers improved case of use and a power boost while maintaining its reasonable price.

Learning to Relate

The simplest database is a two-dimensional table, much like a spreadsheet. The simplest sort of relational capability is to look up data in one of these tables and add it to another table. In a relational link, two columns with the same information in two different tables — a column of Social Security numbers that appears in a tabic of employee salaries and in a table of employee home addresses, for example — are used as the lookup connection between the tables. With clever design, you can arrange a relational database to contain little redundant information (for example, storing address data in only one place), so that large multitable business databases become much more compact than they would be if everything were stored in a single table.

Earlier versions of FileMaker could perform a limited type of relational lookup; 3.0 is a fully relational database, supporting both one-to-one and one-to-many links, a dramatic improvement for users with more challenging database needs. to implement table linking, FileMaker Pro 3.0 uses a spartan dialog box rather than the fancy graphical mapping found in competing packages, but it works well enough for the typical small-business environment.

The Big Easy

The new relational capabilities are great for FileMaker developers, who usually generate the most complex FileMaker applications. But for nonprogrammer end users looking for easy database solutions, the templates provided on CD-ROM will be the biggest news in this release. A group of 23 business templates covers everything from asset management to time cards, with professional-quality expense-control systems, personnel databases, and inventory/accounting software. The 8 education templates run from the obvious (student records) to the adventurous (a nifty Field Trips template), and the 13 home templates include one for recipes, a wedding planner, a medical records keeper, and a check tracker that resembles a mini-Quicken.

You can easily take all of the templates apart and rebuild them to your heart's desire in FileMaker’s Layout mode: a first-time user can remake templates into a custom application in a single afternoon using only the information in the builtin tutorial. This sort of simplicity is the main reason for FileMaker Pro's popularity in the Macintosh small-business database market.

Nothin' but Net

FileMaker Pro 3.0 supports TCP/IP and IPX networking protocols, and includes instructions for using AppleScript to set up your FileMaker database on the World Wide Web. You can use this capability to set up a database of URLs in a sort of specials-interest roll-your-own Yahoo-type site, or use the Product Brochure template and the FileMaker Events URL suite to open your own retail Web site... Once you have your catalog on the Web, you can easily modify it by adding or deleting records in the traditionally easy FileMaker way.

Limits

FileMaker Pro is aimed at small and medium-size businesses interested in efficient database solutions, and its programming capabilities are limited compared with those in competitors like ACI US's 4th Dimension..., Blyth's Omnis 7, or Microsoft FoxPro. Claris greatly expanded the scripting command set from previous versions, and it's still possible to work wonders with third-party script extenders such as Power Agent. But even with its improved scripting and third-party options, FileMaker's capabilities can't compare with those of a real programming environment that has a proper debugger. FileMaker Fro isn't as fast as competitors at searching large flat files and offers minimal connections to the venerable, large-company world of SQL databases.

The Last Word

Even these few drawbacks pose no great threat to FileMaker’s popularity. FileMaker 3.0's developers aimed squarely at the future rather than offering a backward path to legacy data in large corporate databases, as a result, FileMaker Pro delivers a generous assortment of templates and provides a way to put databases on searchable World Wide Websites. For most small businesses, a fast way to post catalogs and other company information to the Web is a more significant database capability than improved programmability, a C-language interface for code resources, blinding flat-file search speed, or a SQL interpreter. And with FileMaker's price below $200 and upgrades for $99, even the smallest enterprise can afford to make the investment.

For the growing mid range of Mac database users — neither simple list-keepers nor users who need Oracle-like highend capabilities — FileMaker Pro 3.0 is an ideal program. It’s easy to learn, easy to use, and provides a comprehensive assortment of tools for common database tasks.

Seiter, Charles. (April 1996). FileMaker Pro 3.0. Macworld. (pg. 56).

Download Claris FileMaker Pro 3.0 (DS, HD) (CD) for Mac

Architecture

68K + PPC (FAT)

Compatibility notes

Emulating this? It could probably run under: Basilisk II