A year after the production of the FileMaker 11 database program, version 11 has arrived, with fresh tools and great latest features that make it that much easier to use. FileMaker 11 also puts many cool database tricks within the reach of ordinary consumers. FileMaker 11 may be the greatest FileMaker ever.
For the particular uninitiated, the the databases half of FileMaker household consists of FileMaker Professional and its big buddy, FileMaker Pro Advanced. FileMaker Pro Advanced carries a few utility features in which matter to full-period database developers: a debugger, a database examination tool, the ability to generate custom functions, custom menus, and more. Otherwise, Expert and Pro Advanced have become similar products—in truth, FileMaker Pro remains an incredibly powerful development tool.
Inside rest of this review, everything I say regarding FileMaker Pro should become understood to apply for you to Pro and Pro Innovative. (There are two server products, FileMaker Server and also FileMaker Server Advanced, that are not covered in this particular review.)
UI improvements
The actual most obvious changes to the user interface in FileMaker Pro 11 are only in Table View, in which you see fields as copy and records as rows, much like you would in a spreadsheet. Kitchen table View is now the particular default view for fresh databases. As soon when you name a new repository, you start defining fields right in Table View. And since you are in fact working in browse setting, you can start getting into data at the identical time. (ProVue’s Cyclorama database has had this kind of for a long occasion.)
As a data-modeling fanatic and notorious killjoy, I worry that FileMaker Pro 11 could possibly have made things easier below than they should always be. You can’t develop a new table or establish a relationship working this way. I will bet the plate of barbecued pig ribs that somebody will make a mess of a new database using this new user interface, since it doesn’t require significantly thought. On the contrary, careful do-it-yourselfers building flat-report databases (i.e. fairly simple lists) will surely be thankful for the running start that the new interface provides. Knowledgeable developers will probably continue to do things the old-fashioned way, using the Manage Database dialog.
Yet another neat enhancement to Kitchen table View: You can now quickly show or hide fields without having in order to edit the underlying design, which wasn’t achievable before.
The greatly improved upon table view in FileMaker Pro 11 may be the default view when anyone create a new databases, allowing you to create new fields by simply clicking a + button (shown here to the right of the Zip discipline). In this shot, an individual has created some areas, added some data, next created a new industry (“#”), moved it into location as the first chromatography column, and the user is currently changing the type on this field from text to number. Note also that this user has previous identified a Quick Report which groups and counts data by City.
FileMaker Pro 11 expands upon vibrant subsummaries, which were launched in FileMaker Pro 10. With dynamic subsummaries you'll be able to total sorted groups of records while you continue to edit data. To build a dynamic subsummary throughout FileMaker Pro 10, you needed to define the summary calculation (say, count regarding records by state) inside Manage Database Dialog, then you had to switch directly into Layout Mode and use a couple of dialogs to create the subsummary display. In FileMaker Pro 11, that can be done all of this around the fly (so to speak) without leaving browse mode. You tell FileMaker Pro what you would like to summarize and how (count by state, average simply by total sales, etc.) along with FileMaker does the remainder for you: creates the summary field and the subsummary layout part, and displays the results immediately. However, there is one potential gotcha—if an individual create a subsummary total this way, you gained’t be able for you to format the result, to see “7.333334” once you would prefer to observe “7.3.” For skilled developers, these changes are not a big deal, but for ordinary do-it-yourself users, they stand for a real step forwards.
The new Quick Come across search field in the actual Status Toolbar looks like your Web browser’s research field or the rapid search fields in all kinds of other Mac OS X programs. It simply does an instant search for records which may have your find criterion most of the fields on the latest layout. When you will need precision, you simply switch into Find mode and also enter your find requirements in the right field, as you’ve always done in FileMaker.
Though FileMaker Pro 11 will try to make it needless for you to go by the hood, you go ahead Layout Mode sooner or perhaps later. When you carry out, you’ll notice the modern Inspector, which provides quick access to various property palettes that used to become hidden in a number of modal dialogs. And the Manage Layouts dialog today allows you to manage layouts in folders.
Charts
Possibly the most exciting new feature (and the top explanation to upgrade) is the ability to make charts. This isn’t an completely new capability for FileMaker Pro; earlier variants could create charts by using third-party plug-ins or through the use of ingenious but very complicated calculation techniques. But today charting is available to be able to everybody and is simple to use. It took me a couple of minutes to create and format my very first chart (a bar data) and then change that into pie chart.
FileMaker now provides various chart options allowing you to definitely visualize your data rapidly. Here, the user has analyzed 2009 expenses in a pie chart. This graph took less than only two minutes to set upward and format.
Sharing info
Two nifty features within FileMaker Pro 11 relate with the exchange or expressing of data.
The fresh Snapshot Link saves the precise found set, layout as well as sort order of your current view in a FileMaker Pro Snapshot Hyperlink (.fpsl) file. You can send this little document to another user (who must have FileMaker Professional 11 and access towards the database) who can open it and instantly see just what you were looking in.
The Snapshot Link report isn’t a true snapshot, as if you made a screen capture; nor does it save your find criteria you may have used to get the actual records you are looking at. It simply saves the particular record IDs of the particular records in your identified set. A Snapshot Hyperlink won’t reflect information that have been additional or deleted after the particular Snapshot Link has been recently created. If something features changed in a document, the record will be shown with the new files. For these reasons, Snapshot Link seems most helpful when you’re coping with relatively stable data and you want to save customized record sets that will be hard to recover otherwise.
Snapshot Link is another neat way to keep your own found set. State you’re planning being married and trying to sort out the guest list. You might create a Snapshot Connect to save your mother’utes preferred list, and an additional Snapshot Link to save your valuable own preferred list. Right here again, this functionality have been within the reach of experienced developers for a long time, but saving and rescuing found sets involved marking records or capturing document IDs and saving these people in the database themselves, and in either scenario required a little intermediate-level scripting. Snapshot Link, alternatively, is quick and uncomplicated.
The new Recurring Imports feature was something that could be done inside FileMaker Pro 10 after a little scripting, but FileMaker 11 will write the set of scripts for you in a reaction to a couple simple queries. A Recurring Import is just an import that occurs over and over again. You might use that, for example, to revise mortgage rates daily.
Regarding serious developers only
The actual emphasis in FileMaker eleven seems to be in making things easier with regard to normal, do-it-yourself users who are certainly not experienced developers. Nevertheless, there are a few things in FileMaker Pro 11 for experienced designers to get excited regarding.
The new Portal Filter systems option makes it with relative ease to design a website—a list showing connected “child” records. For instance, if you’re looking at a record in the particular CLASSES table, a website might be used to show the students enrolled inside a particular class. Portal blocking allows you to filter that list of connected records so that, making use of our example, you discover only students whose present grade in the type is below a specific number.
Now this, too, is something pro builders have been doing for a long period using calc fields as well as/or scripts. FileMaker Professional 11 makes it increasingly easy before, but it photos requires some setup as well as the writing of a formula formula, and I think it’s still a little beyond the reach of the average FileMaker user. Knowledgeable developers will be many grateful for this fresh feature, since it eradicates much of the function they used to are related to achieve the exact same result.
Other improvements found exclusively in FileMaker Pro Advanced include a modest simplification of the Custom Menus dialogs and to be able to copy/paste and/as well as import custom functions.
Perhaps the best news for programmers in FileMaker Pro eleven is that the databases file format remains .fp7, the format released years ago with version 7. In other words and phrases, FileMaker Pro 11 doesn't require you to upgrade all your existing databases if you don’t want for this immediately.
Our buying advice
FileMaker Pro 11 is a solid upgrade with one really thrilling new feature (charts) along with a whole slew of more modest but nonetheless delightful improvements. If your data source needs are very straightforward indeed, you should look at FileMaker Inc’s consumer database product, Bento. In order to share a database, should you be building a relational databases, or if you just need the more advanced scripting and other capabilities found in FileMaker Seasoned or FileMaker Pro Innovative, then this new model of FileMaker Pro gives Mac (and Windows) customers the best combination associated with power and ease useful you’ll find anyplace. And if you’ve been using spreadsheets to list data because you observed the spreadsheet user interface easier to understand or perhaps because you needed in order to chart your data, well, you really ought to take a look at FileMaker Pro 11. You could never launch a spread sheet again.
