FileMakerPro

[jgcode]

Howdy

The company has internal assets developed using FileMakerPro.

I have not developed with it before, but we are looking at possible using it for an upcoming job.

Does anyone have any feedback on using FileMakerPro for creating Databases, Reports etc..?

(From searching it seems find to work with LabVIEW).

Pros/Cons over e.g. mySQL would be great.

E.g. cost vs time to develop interface/view vs encapsulating everything into one GUI (LabVIEW) are a couple of points I am currently reviewing.

I just wanted to know if developers like working with it over another solution?

Cheers

-JG

[Rolf Kalbermatter]

Howdy

The company has internal assets developed using FileMakerPro.

I have not developed with it before, but we are looking at possible using it for an upcoming job.

Does anyone have any feedback on using FileMakerPro for creating Databases, Reports etc..?

(From searching it seems find to work with LabVIEW).

Pros/Cons over e.g. mySQL would be great.

E.g. cost vs time to develop interface/view vs encapsulating everything into one GUI (LabVIEW) are a couple of points I am currently reviewing.

I just wanted to know if developers like working with it over another solution?

It's a long time ago that I have worked with it. Back in the first half of the 90ies of last century when working at NI in Switzerland, we had the entire lead tracking, inventory and invoicing in Filemaker, based on a system developed internally by some NI fanats :-). And no, corporate did not use that system, it was clearly only for the smaller oversea branches!

I was regularly making modifications and extensions to it to add new features and ways to track things.

At that time Filemaker was truely special as you did not really write a database system in it but instead designed (drawed) it, so it was much more similar to LabVIEW than any other database at that time. Is it easier to use than a database you already have experience with? No certainly not!

But it was quite simple to do database systems with it, even relations between tables were possible although it wasn't exactly a full featured relational database back then. I'm not sure I would recognize the current version of Filemaker in any way though as I assume it has come a long way since, just as LabVIEW which has changed from version 3.0 at that time to version 9.0 now.

[jgcode]

It's a long time ago that I have worked with it. Back in the first half of the 90ies of last century when working at NI in Switzerland, we had the entire lead tracking, inventory and invoicing in Filemaker, based on a system developed internally by some NI fanats :-). And no, corporate did not use that system, it was clearly only for the smaller oversea branches!

I was regularly making modifications and extensions to it to add new features and ways to track things.

At that time Filemaker was truely special as you did not really write a database system in it but instead designed (drawed) it, so it was much more similar to LabVIEW than any other database at that time. Is it easier to use than a database you already have experience with? No certainly not!

But it was quite simple to do database systems with it, even relations between tables were possible although it wasn't exactly a full featured relational database back then. I'm not sure I would recognize the current version of Filemaker in any way though as I assume it has come a long way since, just as LabVIEW which has changed from version 3.0 at that time to version 9.0 now.

Hi Rolf

Thanks for replying, it great to hear your experience with it.

I have had more of a play around with it since last posting and it does seem quite powerful.

The time to build a GUI to access data is very fast, and yes it does remind me or LabVIEW quite a bit.

I think I am using v11.0 now but have been using v9.0 for the last two years (as a client only, not for development) - and there seems to be a lot of changes there, so I imagine it would have come along since v3.0!!

If I poke data in it from LabVIEW, but use FMP to view the data then I see a lot of benefits of going down this route in terms of time and cost.

[Val Brown]

I was having trouble interfacing to it correctly back when I tried. What solution are you using for the ODBC driver?

[jgcode]

I was having trouble interfacing to it correctly back when I tried. What solution are you using for the ODBC driver?

Haha!

Thats this weeks job

From searching around it seems doable but I will let you know how I go!

(after Wednesday because I have some training to run start of week).

[drjdpowell]

From searching around it seems doable but I will let you know how I go!

I'm currently trying to upload binary data from LabVIEW into a Filemaker 11 Container field via ODBC and I'm getting nowhere. I wondered if you were able to do this? I can upload non-binary fields fine.

[Val Brown]

I'm currently trying to upload binary data from LabVIEW into a Filemaker 11 Container field via ODBC and I'm getting nowhere. I wondered if you were able to do this? I can upload non-binary fields fine.

In the past I was never able to get it to function correctly via ODBC to serve as a replacement for MS Access so I'm very interested to hear how this turns out.

[drjdpowell]

In the past I was never able to get it to function correctly via ODBC to serve as a replacement for MS Access so I'm very interested to hear how this turns out.

I'm afraid I'm not getting much further. I can upload text into the binary container (though not download it) with ODBC, but trying to upload binary (ADO datatype adBinary or adLongVarBinary) returns "Invalid type". I'm using the Database Toolkit.

The admin who runs the Filemaker hasn't been able to do it with ODBC (non-LabVIEW) but he has uploaded binary with JDBC.

Edited September 7, 2011 by drjdpowell