FileMaker Pro 7 review by PC Magazine: Here’s an interesting review of the new FileMaker Pro 7.
Compared with Microsoft Access, FileMaker retains a distinctive edge in usability. Granted, Access has the advantage when it comes to implementing larger-scale applications that have heftier programmatic needs. But Version 7 extends FileMaker’s appeal farther into the midrange database space.
I played with this app once, and, true to its Mac roots, it was intuitive as anything and just as easy to use.
I was encouraged to find a few ODBC drivers as well, but if you’re going to remove the interface, what’s the point of using anything other than a SQL engine like SQLite or the MSDE?
(Maybe that’s not fair — I think there’s a legitimate use for data creation and administration via the client app, and publishing to the world via the Web, but that’s just me. Use the app to manage to content, then just FTP it up to your server.)
Essentials : Mark Pilgrim has listed his "essential" software tools for doing his job. I always like to see these — the absolute, "can't live without" tools of people who do the same work as me. As the risk of being self-indulgent, here's mine: Email: Thunderbird or Mozilla Mail via…
SQLite: An Embeddable SQL Database Engine: I'm just tickled with this little program. I'm not a client applications programmer, but if I was... SQLite is a tiny, file-based database engine. The Windows exectuable is only 280KB and it's statically compiled, so it needs nothing else to run (read: no…
In an article about the SQL Slammer virus, Nathan Hanks, the CIO of Continental Airlines, said this: If those ports weren't open, slammers would be a non-event. We have MSDE on every single gate PC in our hubs. We immediately failed at putting people on planes. Very interesting. MSDE is…
I use the ODBC to pull info out of our ad tracking database (MS-SQL) and do things with it that the developer never intended or is unwilling to implement. Basically it's my custom interface to any sql database.
So, you import data TO FileMaker via ODBC? How about getting data OUT of FileMaker via ODBC? Have you done any of that?
Can you link tables in FileMaker? Meaning, use FileMaker to manipulate data in tables in other databases, like SQL Server or MySQL? I've always thought this was the slickest thing about Access.
I did a little bit of searching for PHP conpatibility, and didn't find much. Apparently FileMaker Pro Server has Web services built-in, and that seems to be the only way to connect from PHP. The server version runs about a grand.
Although not a solution to let PHP scripts access FileMaker databases, fmSQL Synch can be used to synchronise FileMaker and SQL databases (such as mySQL). IT is currently only available for OSX systems, but that will hopefully change in the near future.
Get more info and download a demo from www.fmsql-synch.com.
