I'm reading the first paragraph of this column -- er, not the one that you're reading now, obviously -- and I don't mind telling you that it troubles me greatly.
I can sense that it's precisely the sort of thing that causes the reader to instantly lose all confidence in the narrator and leap to another page.
But I'm stumped for an alternative so I'll just say that if you hang in there with me, I'll immediately follow it with a piece of valuable, practical, hands-on advice.
Onward:
"I finished a major book project recently, which means that I finally have time to kick back and relax and have some fun for a change. So of course, I've been kicking back with a new update to my favorite database app, living the life of the edgy hedonist bachelor."
See? I wasn't wrong was I?
Yes, I truly enjoy using FileMaker Pro 8.5 (www.filemaker.com; $299 for both Windows and Mac OS editions, or a $99 upgrade from version 8.0), and it worries me.
But I prefer to think that this sort of enthusiasm has less to do with the fact that I have a bust of Boba Fett here on my desk and more to do with FileMaker's goal of being the most ecumenical database app possible.
On Macs, FileMaker is nearly the only game in town, but on Windows, the word "database" means "Microsoft Access." And though Access is a fine, powerful app, it's not designed to appeal to the average person.
Instead, it's designed to appeal to consultants and developers: people who've taken classes in database design and software development -- people who (warning: cringe-worthy term ahead) deploy solutions to end-users.
Wonderful Access projects are possible, but only after due consideration and care.
Not with FileMaker.
Yes, consultants and developers will giddily strip naked and roll around in its Developers' Guide. But even the common user can dive straight in, half-arsed or less, and get some useful work done.
FileMaker is the only database that truly invites you to play with it. There are few bad decisions that you can make at the outset that can't be corrected or improved upon later. In addition, it's so easy to create tools that are perfectly tailored to the way you run your business or your personal life that I almost think the term "database" is a bit misleading, particularly when you think about how easy it is to export data into an Excel spreadsheet, a PDF file or even a Web page.
FileMaker doesn't behave as a Database Management Solution, but as a straightforward tool for managing and processing information.
New features in 8.5 range from the dull (a new range of functions for developers to exploit) to the welcome (a thick online help and resource system) to a terrific new feature that sent me off on that database jag.
Web Viewer makes it trivially easy to incorporate live data from the Web into your databases. If you used FileMaker 8.0 to build a system for processing and shipping orders, adding live package tracking is just a matter of adding a Web Viewer control to the layout, and then hooking it up to the database field that contains a FedEx number.
The Web Viewer control comes with pre-fabbed setups for a bunch of common Web resources (Google Maps, Wikipedia, etc.). I would have liked to have seen a more exhaustive list of presets, but you can paste in any URL for the Web Viewer content, and it's not difficult to come up with a recipe for what you need (i.e., the URL for a contact's MySpace blog is blog.myspace.com, plus a lot of junk, plus the contents of the "MySpace ID" field plus some more junk).
So where once you might have slapped together a simple database of contacts, with 8.5 you can easily set up a contact's layout page so that it always displays its latest blog entry, and photos it has posted to its Flickr album, and its current IM availability, the results of a search of everything it might have recently posted on a bulletin board, satellite imagery of its house, a list of movies playing within five miles, etc.
FileMaker is firmly within that short list of software that's as handy as a roll of duct tape. If you've got it within reach, you'll find a use for it.
Andy Ihnatko writes on technical and computer issues for the Sun-Times.
e-mail: AI@ANDYi.com@
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