Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Filemaker needs a kick in the pants!
FMP 6 is an interesting product. If you take away the buggy ODBC, restricted script language and the thousands of workarounds, which have been created by a loyal usergroup, in order to compensate for a very old and outdated base product, you have a pretty poor means of managing your valuable data. I found FMP 6 to be cumbersome and very limited in how you can represent your data. Try to change a field appearance based on a condition (dollar amount exceeds $...) and you need to create hidden fields, duplicate formulas, etc. It took 3 times longer than MS Access to get some pretty basic functionality out of this dog! Yeah, they say they are faster, easier and more user friendly than MS Access. And, for applications predesigned in the included template, they are. Now, try to do what Access can do. "Forget about it!"Filemaker needs a complete overhaul. They keep adding things like XML support (restricted) while the core program is so outdated that it makes a flatfile database look extremely hightech! If you have valuable data, a need to manage it, report on it, update it and automate it... AVOID FILEMAKER! They compare themselves with MS Access, because MS Access does it right. Filemake is still designed for the Mac user. It's a drawing program for spreadsheets. They have no upgrades for other products, and what they offer to existing users is pretty poor. Filemaker is milking whatever money it can before going out of business. Spend the extra $... and get a real relational database (Access, Alpha Five, etc.). Heck, you will get more functionality and a better dela for your dollar by using MS Excel. And, your data will be stable and safe, and look better. The days of the Mac database known as Filemaker are coming to an end. Their product is poor, at best. Their marketing programs are for MAc users. Their user community is so old they are afraid to move to a true RDBM.
Rating:  - Great, as usual
I've been using FileMaker Pro software since version 1.0, when it was originated by Claris, and was only for Macintosh. I've since switched to PCs, and FileMaker Pro is now its own company. But the quality of the software remains excellent, the upgrades are always worthwhile, and this is still the most user-friendly database I've ever used.Especially if you're an Access user (which is impossible software!), you will love the ease and versatility of this program.
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