FileMaker Pro 11 review

When FileMaker released FileMaker Pro 11, it was the number of improvements that made me want to review it, not the better scalability or suitability to use it for tasks that now (still) require plug-ins.

FileMaker is not MySQL and certainly not Oracle. It’s not that scalable, it’s not that complicated. FileMaker doesn’t target MySQL or Oracle users. It targets small and medium sized organisations and users with database needs that are situated somewhere between personal and enterprise use. It’s great for stores, scientific researchers and even for managing several thousands of records. As soon as your database grows beyond that, though, FileMaker no longer cuts it.

The only way to add features that justify a version upgrade therefore is in the design and usability domain, and FileMaker Pro 11 does a great job at that. New in version 11, for example, is a very easy way to create charts to analyse your data. The ease with which you can create a chart is incredible, but as soon as you want to analyse data in more than one way, you’ll need to script –not as easy as it sounds.

Reports creation is another new feature that has been made a lot easier than with previous versions. There’s an assistant to help you, but here as well the assistance only works well if the requirements are relatively simple too.

What works really well and under all circumstances, is the ability to add records in a spreadsheet kind of way. This ‘report’ mode closely mimics the way Excel ‘Lists’ work, complete with the ability to sort records and all. It goes an extra step further by also allowing you to set summary rows, and more.

The Snapshot Link is a feature that lets you collaborate easier with others who also have a copy of FileMaker. The Recurring Import functionality works well, but it’s a one-way integration between Excel and FileMaker Pro 11 in that you can easily import the changes in the Excel source sheet, but you can’t push changes that you make in FileMaker to Excel –which explains why the recurring import layout is read-only. If you delete the source file, or move it to another location on your system and you click the Import button (to make the import recur), FileMaker can’t find the file and will offer you to stop executing the script or continuing; the latter will result in all records going lost.

The Recurring Import is just another script, and although it’s nice you don’t have to program it yourself, there’s no extra intelligence involved so that the results ultimately are what you can expect from a script…

Quick Find works like a charm. It finds all occurrences of one search term you enter. If you need to concatenate terms from different fields, the old-style find feature is the one to use, but if one term is what you’re looking for, Quick Find works a lot faster than the normal Find.

Designing databases in FileMaker got a lot easier too, with the Inspector. FileMaker Pro 11 finally has an Inspector! This must be the last software on Mac OS X to get one, but it’s finally here and it’s a great addition to FileMaker’s considerable design acumen. Object Badges work in tandem with the Inspector to clarify which fields can be searched, which have conditional formatting, and which trigger scripts. When more than one badge is on a field, it becomes a bit difficult to see which is what, but they are an improvement nevertheless.

The Invoice Starter solution that comes with FileMaker 11 is a great addition, but it’s very much focused on businesses that sell tangibles, not services or even online information objects, which makes it a bit limited in use.

Text highlighting works even when you’re not in Layout mode. This enables you to highlight data when browsing, a very useful addition. Portal Filtering another useful addition that allows you to filter out related records based on conditions (calculations).

What I am still missing –and probably will be for a long time to come– is barcode support out-of-the-box and some better printing support for European label sizes.

Nevertheless, as I said in the beginning, FileMaker targets people who want a performing database tool without complexity, but with a lovely design and flexibility to get started quickly. I think they have succeeded.