Skip to main content

WP's FileMaker 13 Review

My review of FileMaker 13 is finally live at Macworld.com.

Macworld/FileMaker 13 Review

This is a big release, as you will see from the review.

Should you upgrade? There are two possible answers, the easy one, and the hard one.

The easy answer is, yes — yes, you should upgrade.

The hard answer is, of course, more nuanced. As a technologist I more or less have to live near the bleeding edge. But for most of you, it may be reasonable for you to ask, Is what we've got now broke? And if it ain't, then don't "fix" it by upgrading. I understand that.

Just one reassurance for those already using FileMaker 12: FileMaker 13 uses the same ".fmp12" file format at its predecessor. So if you need to add a seat to your current network, and if you're already using FileMaker 12, then by all means, buy a copy of 13 and throw it into the mix.

And if you are still using FileMaker 11 (or earlier) and you've been thinking about upgrading, jumping to 13 might make sense.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Setting up OAUTH with Google in FileMaker 16

Setting up OAuth with Google in FileMaker 16 Posted by William Porter Intended audience: Intermediate to Advanced FileMaker developers Date of publication: 2017-June-06 Updated: 2018-June-06 One of the many exciting features in FileMaker 16 (released May 2017) is OAuth or Open Authentication. Open Authentication allows users to connect to a FileMaker database after authenticating with an external (non-FileMaker) account. At the present time, FileMaker supports OAuth through Google, Amazon and Microsoft. If you're a developer there are two main questions to answer. First, should I do this? And second, how do I do it? I'll answer the first question later. It's important. But the other question-- How  do I setup OAuth?--is answered in the attached document. I wrote this tutorial with the help of my friend and colleague Taylor Sharpe of Taylor Made Services , also here in Dallas. We provide step-by-step instructions on how to get your users authenticating in...

Virtual List Basics

The concept The basic trick behind virtual lists is the wonderful GetValue() function. GetValue() takes two parameters: A list of return-delimited values A number specifying which value in the list to get For example say you have a field in a single record called “List of Values” and it contains the following:    Apple    Boy    Cat    Doorknob    Elephant    Fish When that record is selected, GetValue ( MYTABLE::List of Values ; 4 ) will return “Doorknob”. The brilliant idea is to replace the list of values stored in a field with a list in a global variable . The basic implementation, part one Create a table called VIRTUALLIST. In it, define these two fields: VALUE NUMBER: a number field Value_calc: calc field returning text value, = “GetValue ( $$VALUES; VALUENUMBER )”. Make sure that this value is an unstored calculation. Go to the layout for the VIRTUALLIST table and create s...

Airtable: I'll take that data to go

Will Porter's review of Airtable is online now at Macworld: http://www.macworld.com/article/3036505/software/airtable-review-a-drop-dead-easy-relational-database-management-system.html Rucksack TeXnology clients may be very interested in Airtable. It's a relational database management system that has many advantages. It's free to get started (and possibly free to stay with). On computers, it runs in any web browser in pretty much any operating system. On smart phones, at the moment it's available only for iOS devices, but an Android app is in the works and coming soon. How's Airtable compare to FileMaker? FileMaker is a  much  more powerful tool: not just a more powerful RDBMS, but a much more powerful application development system, that is, a more powerful user-interface builder. But surprisingly often, you don't need the user-interface tools that FileMaker provides. You just need to store data for later retrieval. In that case, Airtable may beat the...