What Are the Pros and Cons of Filemaker ??

Question

A potential customer has asked me to look at some promotional flyers for a couple of apps which fall into the contact management / scheduler category. Both use Filemaker as their backend. It looks like these two apps are sold as web apps. At any rate I had not heard of Filemaker in about ten years, so it was surprising to see it pop up twice in the same sitting. I think it started out as a MAC platform db system.

I am more partial to SQL Server, MY SQL, etc, but before make any comments on Filemaker, I'd like to know some of the pros and cons of the system. It must be more than Access for MACS, but I have never run across it as a player in the client / server or web app arena.

Many thanks Mike Thomas

Answer 1

Pros:

• It's cheap

Cons:

• It's cheap(ly made)
• It's non-standard (easy to find MySQL/Oracle/MSSQL/Access experts but nobody knows Filemaker)

Using subpar and/or nonstandard technologies only creates technology debt. I've only seen it used in shops where the devs came from old school Apple, I've never found a respectable dev that actually enjoyed (or wanted to) using this niche product.

In my opinion this product exists because it is Access for Macs, and it gained enough of a userbase and existing applications that enough people bought each upgrade to keep it in business. There are many products on the market that still exist because it's users are locked in, not because it's a good choice.

Answer 2

Info on Filemaker: http://www.dbms2.com/category/products-and-vendors/filemaker/

Answer 3

A little research has made me think that FileMaker is indeed Access for Mac, but perhaps a little more robust. I worked with Access for years, never really liked it, and am glad to be away from it (I always held a grudge for MSFT killing FoxPro, which I did like).

It is hard for me to imagine it as a good solution for a web based app used by offices in four locations around the country, plus many others logging on from home, etc.

Using it does not make much sense when MySQL, SQL Server, etc are available for the data storage and ASP.NET, PHP, Ruby etc are there for the programming.

Mike Thomas

Answer 4

Just a few comments on the subject

FileMaker is certainly cheaper than some enterprise solutions in licensing costs. However, the real cost benefit is in development time. The development life-cycle is typically orders of magnitude lower than other enterprise platforms (whatever the licensing costs of those platforms). By this I mean days instead of weeks, or weeks rather than months to develop some feature.

There is a strong argument that FileMaker is Access for the Mac. While this was a valid argument a few years ago, FileMaker has come into its own in recent years. It's worth noting that FileMaker is cross platform and used extensively on Windows as well as Mac. That being said there are still huge similarities and differences between FileMaker and Access, the truth is none of them have any bearing on your situation.

While FileMaker is non-standard it does support live connection to MySQL, MS SQL Server and Oracle.

Also, there are numerous FileMaker developers not as much as more standard platforms, but they are definitely about, if you let me know where you are I can put you in touch with a selection of developers in your area.

The important point I want to make is that in the correct context FileMaker is the best thing in the world at what it does - if you try to do something that it's not meant to do, you'll get stuck. However, it could support offices in 4 locations, it can and is being done.

Before you go and rewrite your system in some other platform you should get in touch with a FileMaker expert and see what they have to say about what you've currently got, writing more details on this site and having non-experts answer positively or negatively won't help you. In the end it has to be a business choice of costs vs. benefits.

Answer 5

I'll admit to bias on this subject -- I work with one of the larger FileMaker development shops out there, and have written the odd book on the subject. We actually employ many respectable developers who love using FMP. I'll try to keep it brief. :-)

FileMaker Pro is a rapid app development tool. It's primarily client-server, though it has some very respectable web publishing capabilities which work well for many applications. It is not SQL-based, but does have ODBC and JDBC interfaces, as well as an XML/HTTP interface.

As far as lock-in, FileMaker Inc has grown sales steadily, with very significant growth in new users who are attracted to the platform's solidity and ease of use.

I think Matt Haughton nailed it -- for the right applications, FMP is simply the best choice going. That said, your customer is looking at apps written in FMP Pro, and you need to evaluate those apps on their own merit. They may be good instances of FMP development, or they may not.

To know more about FMP's fitness for the task, we'd need to hear more about the proposed application and user base. Are these indeed web apps, or client-server? How many users will be using it? Do they work at one or two site, or are they spread across the Internet?

Happy to elaborate further if there's more interest.

Answer 6

While the comparisons to "Access for Mac" is inevitable, there are some important distinctions that have to be made.

FileMaker databases can be shared out to more than one person provided 1 of 2 things happen. One, a person on your network opens the DB and shares it from their computer, acting as the host. Two, you buy and install FileMaker server which hosts the DBs.

Also it's been my experience that while FileMaker developers LOVE FM, they're having to learn other technologies because more and more government agencies (my primary employer the past 10 years) are moving off of FM and into SQL Server, Oracle and to some extent Access and open source. FileMaker skills are becoming less and less in demand in the public sector, so getting support for these applications is harder and consequently, more expensive.

That being said, we have a FM server and FM 5.5 clients running an application that has been rock solid for the past 5 years.

Answer 7

please visit http://fmoverflow.stackexchange.com for a site dedicated exclusively to filemaker

Answer 8

i've been using FM for more than a year now. i'm doing and providing solutions for SMBs using the SQL standard for several years. i love those SQL stuff, but just a year a ago i run through FM Pro 9 and have it a try. amazingly, i got all i wanted in just a short time. in my experience as developer, FM Pro impressed me the way it does things.

true enough, FM is not an industry database standard but a good number of its features can compensate to what "standard" is being required of. FM pro has live connectivity to MySQL, MS SQL Server and Oracle. for me, it doesn't make sense to speak about standard if you can move your data around from FM to other platforms and vice-versa.

well, this note can't make that much convincing. it's good to try it for yourself... especially now that FM has its new version 10. believe me... you'll love it...

happy computing.

Answer 9

Just to add my 2¢ to the already given answers: Everything everyone has written in the voted answers is true about Filemaker. The product is robust enough to warrant both positive and negative opinions.

Answer 10

Filemaker is enormously powerful and versatile. Excellent multi-user support. You can create wonderful solutions in Filemaker with document management, web interface, iphone interface, automated publishing support, scheduled scripts, PDF/Excel/HTML reports, XML support, caller ID record lookup, integration of web data (UPS & Fedex linked to order record for example). Extensible with plugins. It's like being in the Home Depot of data. Don't try to build Amazon; other than that what can't you build with it, and faster app dev than most anywhere else?

Answer 11

Hi You can ask filemaker questions here - fmoverflow.com a dedicated filemaker site.

Answer 12

I'm not a pro enough to speak to your concerns but there are a number of large complex applications written in FMP that you may want to look at. Jungle Software is a good place to start. The down side to FMP for me as a user of some of those apps is that they come with a stack of files. The runtime of a FMP application isn't packaged as a bundle so it can look a bit complex with a large app. We did some tests a long time back because FMP had a reputation of being slow. At that time (12 years ago) FMP needed to index the db or it was slow but once it was indexed it was as fast as anything else we tested. It's big upside for semi pros is that it is very easy to do basic stuff and end up with working tool. My experience with Access was extremely negative so I wouldn't compare it at all with FMP.

In the end it doesn't really mater what it was written in, if the software does what you want and is stable buy it. If it doesn't don't. It is very easy to get data in and out of FMP so the proprietaryness of the db format doesn't really enter into it.

Answer 13

I am in the process of evaluating FMP to determine whether I will re-write my Pawnhop app with it. See video-demo in: www.frankcomputer.com If I am able to mimic my character-based apps functionality with it, then I will convert to FMP.

Answer 14

@Frank Computer,

Ese sistema que tienes lo puedes portar a FM con toda la funcionalidad que tienes en el de DOS.

Otman