Ancient in computer years, still going strong

Filemaker Pro is 10. Or rather, the database software is up to version 10 - it has been used by businesses and home users for more than 20 years.

That prompted me to hunt down some New Zealand developers to ask what appeals about the Apple subsidiary's answer to Microsoft Access, Oracle, open-source databases et al.

Craig Saunders from Christchurch bespoke developer Digital Fusion says if the firm was developing a web application, it would probably use open-source database tools like PHP and MySQL, which were made with internet traffic levels in mind.

"If the application is internal to the business, we would probably use Filemaker because it's quicker to build and more flexible going forward," Saunders says.

"If someone comes to us and doesn't want an off-the-shelf system, they want something that suits their business and way of working which will change and evolve, Filemaker is ideal for that. We can do all that with web application, but Filemaker is quicker and richer.

Filemaker bundles up a relational database engine with tools to make it relatively easy to create graphical front ends and for users to modify it or generate reports.

"Under the hood it's similar to SQL, but you are getting an integrated environment where the database structure is in there with scripting and calculation models.

"If you want to add a new field to a complex record, you go and define a field, type in a name, okay that, and you are done. Then you go to layout mode and drag the field on to the layout. Not many platforms are that tightly integrated."

Among the systems Digital Fusion has created is a call centre platform to store scripts and customer details, a booking system for the Sydney Film Festival, a records system for a plant nursery to track orders and crop propagation, and a system for a West Coast trucking firm.

"It integrates the GPS in the trucks with timesheets. It saves at least 15 minutes per person per day entering information, plus it's invaluable for accuracy - there's no argument about how long was spent on a job."

It also built the non-academic enrolment system for Canterbury University, keeping track of hundreds of short courses and one-off lectures or seminars.

"We think Filemaker is a great platform for building systems for the SME [small and medium enterprise] market, such as job tracking, low-end ERP, front-of-line business applications where you can get a competitive advantage," Saunders says.

"It does not have the robust transactional structures of, say, Oracle. If you want full rollback and redundancy and things like that, you have got to work hard to make that work.

"But for SMEs where the database is not huge that backing up every half hour or taking it down overnight to do maintenance is not a problem, it's ideal."

Filemaker has run on both Windows and Mac since 1992, and Digital Fusion's client base is split evenly between the platforms.

Bay of Plenty software developer Kent Lendrum says that platform agnosticism was behind his choice of Filemaker to develop a school management system 10 years ago.

"The school I was in had both Mac and Windows machines, so it had to be cross-platform," he says.

That system, Kamar, was picked up by other schools, and in 2005 Lendrum quit teaching to build the business full-time.

He now covers just under half of the secondary school market, with more than 11,000 teachers in 180 schools using Kamar to mark rolls, store test results, organise sports schedules and handle all the other record-keeping that chews up non-classroom time.

Filemaker's flexibility is important for keeping the system in line with schools' changing demands - Kamar incorporates over 38,000 achievement standards and internal standards.

"After a student has been in a school for five years, there will be about 500 fields of information - attendance, pastoral data, marks, assessments, after-school groups. It keeps track of everything."

Kamar is now using the web publishing built into the latest versions of Filemaker to develop interfaces for parents to access school systems online to track their child's progress. He says it's changing some of the ways schools operate.

"Most schools will now do attendance entries straight into the computer. Three years ago most were still marking rolls on paper, so that change provides a lot more central access to records."

Because Filemaker develops software for both the server and the client, "you can develop the system on a stand-alone computer, dump it on a server, and 250 people can immediately connect.

"It's user-friendly. Filemaker hides from the developer and therefore the user all the arcane questions that are going on in SQL."

* adamgifford55@gmail.com