In those situations, the company says you're better off starting over, rebuilding your database from scratch in version 7, claiming that you will benefit from the efficiencies of 7's more modern architecture. You wind up with the same mess of scattered files you started with, and you miss out on one important benefit of the upgrade. Incredibly, though, it can't convert one of those pseudo-relational file setups (a constellation of linked files) into a single self-contained relational one. The new program converts older FileMaker files into the version 7 format. An ingenious map view illustrates all the tables you've set up and lets you establish relationships between them just by drawing lines on the screen. But in FileMaker Pro 7, a single file can contain dozens of these so-called tables - a configuration that's a lot easier to back up, password-protect, copy to other machines and so on. In FileMaker 6, a setup like this involved linking separate files on your hard drive.
How to make a filemaker pro database update#
If you update the address on the order form, you've just corrected the master address book, too. That information isn't just pasted in, either it's live.
In a relational database, these two lists (and many others) can be linked: as soon as you type the customer's name on the order form, the address automatically appears beneath it. Suppose, for example, that your store maintains two separate lists: a customer address list and a list of orders. But as databases grow more complex, being relational becomes a very important attribute. The biggest change in FileMaker 7 is that it's now fully relational - a statement that either sent shivers down your spine or left you baffled, depending on your degree of database geekiness. Regime change, as everyone knows, can get a little messy. The bad news is that the program has been so thoroughly renovated, FileMaker veterans are in for some unlearning and redesigning.
How to make a filemaker pro database series#
The standoff is the latest in a series of confrontations between the companies. App Store Battle: Spotify wants to get into the audiobooks business, but Apple has rejected its new app three times.Big Tech’s Slowdown: Amid stubborn inflation and rising interest rates, Google, Meta, Microsoft and other Silicon Valley giants are signaling that tough days may be ahead.
One layout of your customer list might resemble a phone book another might be mailing labels a third might extract nothing but the first name from each customer's information so that you can print out ''Hello, My Name Is'' stickers for your customer-appreciation barbecue. The central concept: once you have entered your data, you can design unlimited layouts of the same information, or subsets of it. But because Access can be daunting to learn, a spokesman for FileMaker jokes that it's ''one of the world's most widely distributed unused products.'')įileMaker Pro became an unsung hero in small businesses and in homes by permitting even amateurs to create powerful, good-looking databases with no programming - and very few $45 calls to FileMaker technical support. (Microsoft might argue that more copies of its Access database are sitting on the world's hard drives after all, for years, Access came with every copy of Microsoft Office. And even at home, a true-blue database program is a much more flexible system for keeping track of CD collections, eBay auctions and even recipes than typing them all into Excel spreadsheets.Īmong nonprogrammers working in nonskyscrapers, the best-selling individually packaged database program is FileMaker Pro. Many small-business owners, in particular, would be lost without some convenient way to track inventory, print invoices, maintain customer lists, tally billable hours, prepare expense reports and so on. Once word spread that our buying habits, Web explorations and video rentals were being tracked and recorded, the reputation of the computerized database somehow drifted from ''symbol of efficiency, accuracy, and a better tomorrow'' to ''Big Brother's best buddy.'' If databases were human, they'd hire an image consultant right about now.īut if the only affairs you want to track are your own, a database is one of the most useful pieces of software. SOMEWHERE along the line, electronic databases started getting a bad name.
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