(See: “Expo: FileMaker turns 10 with database update” and “First Look: FileMaker Pro 10“)

First let me say that there are plenty of desktop databases available for Mac if you are looking for just a database. Fore example there is MySQL, SQLite (comes with 10.5), PostgreSQL, and Firebird, to name just a few. And these are fine if all you are looking for is a database and you don’t mind writing scripts to manipulate your data. There are some tools out there for managing tables.

If you are a developer like me you can write your own applications for data entry and reports. These can be desktop applications written in Java, Objective-C, Real Basic, or some other language and window frame work suitable for building desktop applications. You can also develop Web applications that you run only on your computer using PHP, Ruby, Perl, Python, etc… All these languages come pre installed on your Mac as well. There is a variety of IDEs (Integrated Development Environments) that you could use to manage the development of your applications that you build to manage your data such as Xcode, Eclipse and RealBasic. But even I, a veteran developer, having made a career out of developing applications this way gets tired when I want something quick and easy.

So what are your other choices? If you run MS Windows you can use MS Access. If you can install OpenOffice you have Base, and finally there is FileMaker.

There use to be other choices out there a long time ago — such as dBase, FoxPro, and Clipper. Sybase still produces PowerBuilder and I believe that you can still purchase a personal desktop edition. Oracle had some personal desktop database products, so did IBM/Lotus… But most of these products ran on Windows and to use any of these you need to have some programming skills.

So what about Mac. There is nothing, its a black hole, a void. The folks at FileMaker know this and yet they still refuse to add in usable features such as:

• Pivot Tables
• Graph Objects
• Views
• Programable Form Objects
• Embedded Subforms
• Stored Procedures and Functions
• A real IDE for advanced development

The Mac community needs MS Access or something just as equivalent in functionality for OS X. We need a self contained solution for creating tables, views, forms and reports. The ability to export the results of the data to PDF, HTML, XML, and CSV. We need a way to develop solutions that can easily be packaged up distributed to users using Mac, Windows, and Linux. It needs to be easy enough that an administrative assistant can figure it out, but powerful enough that a developer could take what the administrative assistant started and turn it into an enterprise application. FileMaker in general is a great concept but it needs to be rewritten from the ground up. Forget Bento that POS just needs to die. Its user interface is prettier than FileMaker but its functionality blows. The other alternative is for MS to release Access for the Mac. I would love to know if they have tried porting it at one time or another.

The first person or company that can truly fill this need is going to make a boat load of money. Lets face it not everything belongs on the web.

Pivot Tables
In my opinion one of MS Access’s strongest features over FileMaker is its ability to perform piviot tables. Yes you can export your data from FileMaker into MS Excel and perform piviot tables but why? I want to make self contained desktop database applications.

Views/Queries
In real SQL RDBMSs (ORACLE, MS SQL Server, Sybase, MySQL) they are called Views. In reality it is a stored query that looks and behaves just like a table (for the most part). In MS Access its called a Query. I want to be able to create views from a subset of a table, or multiple tables. Use them to make other views, forms, or reports. I’ve been asking for this since I started using FileMaker Pro 7.0. That’s almost eight years.

Graphs
Sure there are third party plugins that one can buy to give them the ability to build grafts into their forms and reports. But if you ust spent $300 – $500 dollars for a desktop database system why should you have to go spend extra to have the ability to add graphs to your forms and reports? Again something that I’ve been asking for since version 7.0.

A True Programming Environment
In Oracle you have PL/SQL, in MS SQL and Sybase you have T-SQL, in MS Access they are called modules (or something like that). The ability to create stored procedures and functions, the raw power to make your database perform amazing things. I’ve simplified this a little but any database developer worth their weight in gold knows what I’m talking about. For everyone else there is the ability to create those little things FileMaker calls “scripts”, MS Access calls them Macros. I want an editor that uses syntax highlighting, where I can actually type in what I want the database to do. Not this find the macro on the left, double click, and fill-in-the blank crap. Its to limiting. While I’m at it how about some good tutorials on how to write plugins. I’ve yet to find one of those.

These are just a few things that I think would make FileMaker database products shine. Personally if I had been the person put in charge of their developers this is what I would have focused on vs. Bento. Bento isn’t even cross platform, but that’s another story for another time.