FileMaker Pro 8 Advanced Upgrade from FileMaker Pro 6-8 Win/Mac

List Price: $299.00

Features:

• Design and develop customized, advanced databases quickly
• Customize your database by modifying FileMaker menus to execute scripts from menu items
• Enhanced reports help you troubleshoot missing references, broken relationships, calculations, and more
• Use the file maintenance tools to maximize performance and to compact and recover unused space
• You must be a licensed user of FileMaker Pro 6 Developer or FileMaker Pro 7 Developer to qualify for this upgrade

Customer Reviews:

It just keeps getting better and better [Posted on 2007-02-27]
After all these years, I look back on how Filemaker has grown and I am amazed. I started out using version 1 of filemaker when it was still made by Nashoba Systems and the software came on a floppy disk.

If you are new to databases, Filemaker is for you. As I write this, I am currently using version 8.5. Let me suggest that if your looking to get into databases, spend the extra money and get this latest and greatest version. It adds a lot of functionality.

I find myself creating solutions to handle new problems all the time. With this advanced version, I can them compile these solutions as stand alone applications that I can then sell or distribute as I please and the folks who use it don't have to own Filemaker themselves.

There is simply no other database out there that is as easy to get your head wrapped around as Filemaker.

Whats more, Filemaker is cross platform! That means that you can buy the package and run it on both Mac and Windows. So when I create solutions, I can create runtimes for both systems. It is all amazingly easy.

I have had to wrestle with the database needs of lots of different companies in the past. I have had to create everything from bug tracking software to equipment cataloging. In many cases, I came into a company that was using Access or some other database only to discover that it was actually easier to simply create a whole new solution using Filemaker than to try and get the existing database to do what we wanted.

If your looking for power with flexibility and the ability to really quickly get a solution up and running, Filemaker has got to be your first choice.

Filemaker power-user [Posted on 2007-03-25]
Filemaker 8 is a must for long-time FM users. FM8 added many of my wishes: saving of found sets to PDF, Mail, Excel - all scriptable as well; layout creation aids such as Tabs and drop-down calendars. The continued poor implementation of Format Painter is rather frustrating and disappointing though. It needs to operate more like that of CAD programs, with a simple modifier key toggle between picking-up and putting-down attributes and a dialog for choosing which attributes. The function is that important (hello FM?).

But the big celebration was in the scripting department. Global and local variables and the various script steps for setting and getting them, is the biggest improvement to FM in years. I literally rewrote all my applications in a 3-4 day whirlwind, resulting in shorter, simpler to troubleshoot scripts and faster performance. The Get(ScriptResult) function likewise makes sense and short work of previously multiple-nested arguments. Go to Related Record is an excellent addition to the script toolbox and sees constant use.

Also, finally your scroll wheel works.

The advanced version, despite the cost, provides developer functionality that I don't know how I ever lived without. Scripts that operate on multi-table databases can be very hard to troubleshoot, and these concepts are the very heart and soul of Filemaker, what really sets it apart from so many other programs. It's hard to think of any database concept which cannot be simply implemented now that I have these tools at my disposal. Many long-time problems I had struggled with were solved literally the first day I had Advanced.

On the down side, Filemaker alienated me for the first time as a long-time loyal user by doing two very annoying things:
1) A rather important, major release of 8.5 just weeks after I purchased 8 was made available to me for the standard upgrade price of $100. It is customary throughout the software industry to offer very recent buyers a discounted path to the next revision. No such luck.
2) Authorization was unbelievable cumbersome, involving the usual serial number, then an online check-in followed by an emailed, machine-specific serial number to unlock the software. This means that, in contradiction of Filemaker's own user license agreement, I cannot install it on my laptop and desktop machines as I have since Filemaker v3 without pleading my case to customer support, which basically offends me to the degree that I haven't bothered, using only my laptop for development. Attention Filemaker: your user base consists of honest people.

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