Filemaker 9 users heads up

Re: Filemaker 9 users heads up

John Roberts said:
So what if I'm still running ver 8? :-)

JR (not an upgrade kind of guy)
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I don't update software that often either. Usually just when something breaks.

mackerr said:
Or version 5.5?

I have to upgrade do to Lion compatibility issues anyway.

Mac
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I have been exposed to Filemaker since its earlier days, but really got started building FM databases during the 5.5 release (I think). Either that release, or soon after, they reworked it so you could put more than one DB table into a single file. That cleared up the requirement for associations between different files, but creates a small bit of migration work (importing and then verifying field names in DB tables and scripts). But I have found it to be generally more stable after that. Now it is harder to inadvertently break something while making adjustments, due to everything being integrated into one tight little file.

There have been some useful improvements over time, some more important to me than others. So in the end I will probably need to have a look at the change logs page.
 
Re: Filemaker 9 users heads up

Well I thought I'd give an update. Someone else I work with downloaded the demo for 12. They took a look at Filemaker 12, and then I looked at it. I loaded one of my databases that I am familiar with, use it on a daily basis almost. I copied it to his computer and ran the upgrader. The features look promising, but for now it runs WAY slower than any previous version. For now.

Based on this, they will apparently need to release some patches
Filemaker Pro 12 - Responding slow

Ahh well...
 
Re: Filemaker 9 users heads up

Filemaker Pro 12 - Responding slow
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I'm not surprised, sadly. I gave up on filemaker a while ago. I did a lot of fmp development ± 10 years ago. Then, for various reasons, I got into mysql and the 'LAMP stack' (as my real programmer friends say) and never looked back. That is, until last year, when I decided to get off my butt and build a point-of-sale app for my club. I thought, 'hey, I'll check out filemaker and see how it's progressed over the past decade...surely the odbc and general web support must have improved enormously...oh, look, they have an IOS app now!'

Well, the IOS app ran slower than molasses since they didn't use any of the webkit calls. In fact, aside from adding multiple tables to a DB years ago, as you point out, I can't see any real improvements in the last decade. Sad.

-waldo
 
Re: Filemaker 9 users heads up

[waldo] Casey Williams;28807 said:
I'm not surprised, sadly. I gave up on filemaker a while ago. I did a lot of fmp development ± 10 years ago. Then, for various reasons, I got into mysql and the 'LAMP stack' (as my real programmer friends say) and never looked back. That is, until last year, when I decided to get off my butt and build a point-of-sale app for my club. I thought, 'hey, I'll check out filemaker and see how it's progressed over the past decade...surely the odbc and general web support must have improved enormously...oh, look, they have an IOS app now!'

Well, the IOS app ran slower than molasses since they didn't use any of the webkit calls. In fact, aside from adding multiple tables to a DB years ago, as you point out, I can't see any real improvements in the last decade. Sad.

-waldo
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I'm a computer guy only when I need to be, not because I choose to be, that is the premise behind my choice of software here.

Apparently the cause for slowdown is CSS support for page displays, although I will not be using it as a webserver, just locally. (??) What's this? Oh no...don't tell me modified the way it works locally.
 
Re: Filemaker 9 users heads up

I have been updating my databases to fp7 files as used by FMP11. I couldn't make the jump right to v12 anyway, so am using the trial version for now to get as far as 11. That version seems to work fine, and will be upgradable to 12 if I decide to go there. Now to find a way to buy 11.

Mac
 
Re: Filemaker 9 users heads up

Looks like we will just stay with Filemaker v.9 until they have enough time to get v.12 debugged. They have had issues before, and they have been resolved. It is only a matter of time. It would not be worth our effort at this point to reinvent everything.

However, Alpha 5 is an alternative I did find. It may be worth looking into, for someone who has not yet begun to develop his own solution just quite yet. Capable of doing anything Filemaker can do and more, it is also a self-contained database solution. Or you could use it alongside conventional databases. Also it has what looks like a better pricing structure. Caveat: It is not cross-platform like Filemaker. PC only.

Main
www.alphasoftware.com

Comparison to Filemaker
Sell this FileMaker developer on A5 :))
 
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Re: Filemaker 9 users heads up

That looks pretty cool. If I were starting a project from scratch, I'd start here. It seems to be geared toward web apps, but that's really what we all want these days anyway. I bet one could bang out a rental, inventory and packing-list app on this pretty darn quickly.

edit: regarding Alpha, that is.
 
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