Databases are about records, right? Newly released FileMaker Pro 9 could very well have broken the record for the time span between half-point releases: some 18 months. Some may say the wait was worth it, others may be left pondering.
One thing for sure, the longer the wait, the higher the expectations. There was talk of this and that wow feature being worked on and enthusiasts were hoping that that was the reason for the delay. But soon talk spread about trouble at FileMaker (FM) Inc implementing one or two new features. It appears programmers and designers were bogged down. The FM community still hoped for a worthy release by the end of it all.
This release probably more than any other before it has made it clear that there are two FM communities: developers who build business-oriented applications and those who don't, who we'll call "the others", who build school report systems, film/play scripts, household catalogues of various kinds and other data processors. This time around business developers are the clear winners.
They will find enjoy FMPro's embrace of external SQL data sources involving what official FM press releases say is live integration of data from MS SQL, Oracle and MySQL; or what respected FM reviewer, William Porter, describes as "live two-way connections to SQL databases ... heavy-duty databases used in big corporations, universities, research, and on the web". Picture the little guy comfortably in it amongst the big guys and you've got it. It's another step, a giant one in this case, in which FMPro is successfully overcoming its propriety language to communicate with other data-storing software (it already communicates well with MS Excel, can import and export to most database file formats, does not too badly with MS Word and can provide snapshots to just about every computer in the world with its "Save to PDF" function).
But for the others, developers who have no interest in SQL connectivity, release 9 certainly puts the question out there: is the upgrade worth the $500 ticket for Advanced users (and the additional $70 for the must-have book, Special Edition Using FileMaker 9, when hopefully it comes out)? Releases 7 and 8 made it easy to answer "yes", but 9 takes some thinking.
The best of the new features for the others is conditional formatting. Field contents dynamically change their display attributes based on criteria set in a dedicated window. Yes, most of this stuff could already be done via programming (what FM calls "calculations"), but the new implementation is so much easier and neater and can be applied to any field not just calculation fields; and even better is that formatting can be extended to buttons; non-functioning buttons, for example, can be greyed out. Developers can now give their applications that added professional software look.