Filemaker Pro 10

The Latest of Filemaker Pro makes this great database software even better.

Originally conceived by Apple as a better tool for creating and managing large databases, Filemaker Pro has continued to be improved over the years, and its latest version makes a great product even better. Setting up a database couldn't be easier. On opening, Filemaker gives you the option to use built in templates or to create a new database from scratch. Doing the latter allows you to easily create fields for your database, name them, and specify the type of data that will fill in the fields.

To test Filemaker Pro 10, we created four simple databases. Each database contained one "number" field and 11 "text fields. These databases would be used to hold product info for various retail product lists. The type of data ranged from product numbers and prices to URLs at appropriate retailer Web sites. Once we had the fields in the tables created, a job that took less than 15 minutes for all four databases, we simply chose to import the data file for each database.

Our data files were in the CSV format and contained a variety of records. The largest contained almost two hundred thousand product records. In trying to manipulate that monster, we found that other tools, such as basic software designed to manipulate CSV files and spreadsheets, including Microsoft Excel and Apple's Numbers were inadequate. The number of records was just too great.

In Filemaker Pro, however, the importing experience was fast and painless. Choosing the file in the import dialog allowed us to quickly ensure that that the data to imported matched our fields. We found that no adjustments at this point were needed. Upon clicking the import button, the file was brought in smoothly and quickly with no errors. In no time flat we had an easily searchable database containing the nearly two hundred thousand records. We did the same thing three more times, while leaving the initial large database open within Filemaker. A similar database with over 60,000 records again imported flawlessly. That experience was repeated with files containg over twenty thousand and over six hundred records respectively. No errors occurred at any point and the Filemaker Pro application continued to operate flawlessly and with no degradation in speed during the entire time. Further testing showed that it was fast and easy to switch between databases and to search within the databases.

Our tests only scratched the surface of what's possible with Filemaker Pro, but it was enough to convince us that anyone who needs to manipulate large amounts of data should seriosly consider trying out the latest version of this incredible software.