Filemaker Pro 10 database software

There’s no Mac version of Microsoft’s Access database, so Filemaker Pro has always had the Mac database market pretty much to itself.

Its only real competition is Filemaker’s own low-cost Bento, ­ a cut-down version of Filemaker.

However, Filemaker Pro is also one of the few database programs that runs on both Macs and PCs, so it’s used by quite a few large businesses and educational establishments that need to share their database information across both platforms.

This latest version of Filemaker Pro takes a few tips from Bento, with a redesigned interface and new features designed to improve the program’s ease of use. Some of the new features are fairly modest, ­ such as the ability to import spreadsheet data in Excel’s .xlsx format, in addition to the older .xls format. There’s also a number of new ‘starter solutions’ ­ database templates that are included to help you get started with common tasks. These cover a wide range of tasks, from organising your music collection at home to tracking business expenses.

The key changes in this upgrade revolve around the program’s interface. A number of options that were previously scattered around various toolbars and menus have now been gathered into the Status Toolbar across the top of the screen. You can also customise this toolbar so that it includes just the features you use the most. Just right-click on the toolbar and you open a dialogue box that includes icons representing commands such as ‘Save As PDF’. You can then drag an icon and place it wherever you want on the toolbar.

The Status Toolbar is also context-sensitive, and displays different commands in different modes ­ graphics tools when you’re in Layout mode or search tools in Browse mode ­ and you can customise the toolbar with different commands in each mode. This makes it easy to fine-tune the toolbar so that Filemaker’s key features and commands are always right there on screen when you need them.

Other productivity-enhancing features include the ability to save search results and keep these neatly arranged in a pulldown menu in the Status Toolbar so that you can go back and retrieve the results of any search. Whenever you perform a search the program displays a small pie chart in the Status Toolbar that shows what percentage of records in the database satisfy the search criteria, and allows you to view the ‘omitted’ records that didn’t meet the search criteria.

For more advanced database design Filemaker Pro now includes a series of ‘script triggers’. Scripts in Filemaker are similar to macros in a spreadsheet ­ a series of linked commands that you can save and use to perform routine tasks automatically ­ and script triggers can be used to activate a script whenever the person using the database performs a specific action, such as entering data into a field or selecting an item from a pulldown menu.

This makes it easier for the database designer to control how users interact with the database ­ perhaps giving them a warning if they enter data in an incorrect format, or even correcting the data automatically to save time. There’s also an Advanced version of Filemaker Pro 10 that costs £329, and which includes additional features such as a Script Debugger that provides more precise control over scripting.

The number of new features in Filemaker Pro 10 may seem relatively small, but the more streamlined interface makes the program easier to use, making this an upgrade that can be recommended to any of Filemaker’s existing users.