The new FileMaker is out! I got my shiny box last week, it came when I was in Detroit. I have been playing around and am about to post a First Look article. I want to go through the changes in ScriptMaker, then I will post it. So stay tuned.
I am not going to be using FileMaker 7 for any of the solutions I have created for Student Publications. So why did I buy it? Because I need to be ahead of the curve. I need to know about all the changes. And eventually I will be moving the Unigraphics invoicing system, the KEY Yearbook purchasing database, etc, over to FMP 7, but not right this minute.
They have changed too many variables. And since it is a new file format, we would need to upgrade to FileMaker Server 7 which comes out this summer.
That being said, I could do a lot more with 7, and it is well worth the work, in my opinion, to port everything to 7.
The one glaring omission I see is no "import file/table" feature in the Define Database dialog. FileMaker now acts like a SQL database, or day I say MS Access, you now have multiple tables in one file. Before v. 7 you had one table per file. FMI could have been nice and included a consolidation feature. That would have been great.
Well leave it to the plugin community to fill a void. Both New Millennium and .com Solutions has tools out to help move a multi file solution into a single file, multi table solution.
FM Robot from New Millennium is a table consolidation utility. It takes the Database Design Report (so you need Developer, not just Pro) and consolidates all your files into one multi table file. I might invest in this tool. New Millennium makes good software, so it looks like it would be worth it. Only the Windows version is available right now, so I think I will wait until they release a Mac version. Although I might just get the PC version to have it now, I do as much developing in FileMaker on Windows these days as I do on the Mac.
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