A love note for Filemaker Pro

I've probably said this before but it's worth saying again: I love FileMaker Pro. I particularly wanted to say this today because I've just spent the past couple of days working on a new FileMaker database for a client and I enjoyed every minute of it. Perhaps that just makes me a geek with a strange sense of enjoyment and if that's the case, I can accept it. I really do enjoy doing the work I do with FMP, both the process and the end result.

In the past 6 years of using FileMaker I've discovered that, as with web development, there is something very rewarding in the process of learning how to create better solutions. Developing in FileMaker, which always includes learning new ways to do a task better, seems easy and natural. With each solution that I build I usually discover several new techniques which results in generally improved databases. Sometimes it's a new layout technique, other times new steps in script building, quite often it seems to be a combination of both.

Thinking back to my first FileMaker Pro database, a modification of one of the included solutions in version 5.0, and the progression I've made, I realize what makes FMP so fantastic. FileMaker has built a platform that makes it easy to be a user and a developer. In fact they've blurred the lines of what those terms mean and that means they've created a tool that empowers the user. I started down the road of FileMaker development the first time I clicked that little button towards the bottom left of my database. I changed it from browse to layout and that was it, that was the moment. Within a day I had completely modified the visual layout of the library database. I'd also begun tinkering with fields and different methods for sharing.

From tinkering to developing

Within a few months I had modified another of the included databases and had started publishing information to the web via export into html. Let's jump forward two years. I was working at a non-profit as an all around office geek. They decided that it was well past the time that they needed an entirely new database for tracking their 700+ clients and volunteers. Their first decision was to hire one of their volunteers to develop the database with Access. After several months he had to quit the project and I jumped in though somewhat unintentionally at first.

I took a look at what he had completed and discovered his database was about 40% complete. Just for fun, over the next few days I quietly began experimenting with my first attempt at several, related databases. Within a week I had progressed to the point that I felt confident enough that I could offer to do the database in FileMaker Pro. We scheduled a meeting and discussed the FileMaker Pro option. I was given the go ahead. Less than three months later I was exporting data from the old system and importing into the new. This was 2002 and I moved away in 2004. To this day they are still using the system and with no problems. I check in every so often but the answer is always the same,"Everything is fine here."

That was the beginning of what I consider to be a great relationship.

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