Your first few days of using Phyla will be like entering a new database world. Instead of flat files you have classes of objects; instead of fields you have attributes. As you work through Mainstay’s well-designed tutorial and start thinking of invoices, mailing lists, and customer files as objects, you begin to see tenuous similarities to more traditional databases such as Claris FileMaker Pro and ACI US 4th Dimension. Finally, if you’re an old Mac database hand, you’ll have a shock of recognition — Phyla is like the perennial Mac favorite, Helix Technologies’ Helix Express.
Phyla is predicated upon the rise of C++ as the dominant programming language, rather than an imitation of earlier databases. If you hired a C++ programmer to design an invoice system for your business, the program would have class definitions just like those in a Phyla database... Suppose you create an object called customer that you define by the following attributes: name, address, and phone number. In Phyla, and in C++, modifying the object to add a fax number is trivial. But in Phyla (not so in C++), it’s also easy to relate your customer object to other objects such as invoice or credit information — you just draw a relation arrow between the objects and type in the relation definition.
Simplicity of design and ease of modification are big pluses for Phyla, which allow's you to build fancy relational databases by dragging objects between windows. Another advantage is speed. Because Phyla continuously updates what other databases call calculated fields reporting is very quick; recalculation is a background activity^ On a Quadra 610 (there is no Power Mac version of Phyla yet), Phyla is also faster than market leader FileMaker Pro at nearly every flat-file searching and sorting task. Password protection of whole databases and parts of databases is also clean and intuitive.
While Phyla doesn’t require that you learn a programming language, it wouldn’t hurt to have had an introduction to SmallTalk or C++. At least you would have a head start on Phyla-speak, which shares almost nothing with traditional relational-database terminolog). Some key topics in practical database usage, such as label printing and paper-report formatting, need more explaining in the documentation.
Phyla can import and export flat data files (used in other database programs), but this product still wouldn’t be a first choice for a cross-platform office.
The Last Word While non-programmers can use Phyla effectively, it’s a more natural database choice for small-office users with some object-oriented programming background. Phyla lacks the large third-party support and consulting environments that have grown up around 4D and FileMaker. But it’s fast, and it’s a solid implementation of modern object-database practice.
Seiter, Charles. (August 1995). Phyla 1.0.3. Macworld. (pg. 85).
Mainstay
Applications
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2021-12-02 / 
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Phyla_Demo.sit_.hqx
Emulating this? It could probably run under: 
Basilisk II
