Hello,

I hope that this is the right forum to ask my question: I am looking for rapid design tool for a database GUI interface on a Mac that is open and extendible. I have never used Filemaker - on MS windows I might use MS Access - but I want to work on a Mac and hence would like to ask whether FM would be a good choice for me.

My situation: I have a couple of Python and shell scripts and libraries. They gather and calculate data (time series data and lower frequency reference data). I have started to structure the data into a relational database - currently based on MySQL, but I don't care about the database system, as long as it speaks SQL and ODBC. My database is small, say, 20 Gigabytes.

What I need: I would like to add a GUI for browsing, displaying and editing data without investing much effort into GUI-development. Apart from displaying and editing database tables (or views), the GUI should also allow to handle other files or data sources, e.g. CSV-files, PDF-files, and display results of interactive queries and custom-calculations. For custom-calculations in the GUI, I would like to use a standard programming language, preferably Python in order to re-use my already existing python libraries, or Apple's Swift.

It seems to me that FileMaker is great for the GUI part. However, the FM web site confuses me as it seems to focus on non-programmers (just my impression from the demos and videos). Thus, I worry that FM might not be open in terms of external API-access and programming features for extending the GUI. I have seen that plug-ins and ODBC are supported, but somehow the FileMaker web-page feels wrong to me - it focusses on ease-of-use and on how easily consumers can build applications without having technical knowledge. Thus, from the web-page, I get the impression that FM is a consumer-product, that technically oriented users are not FM's target group, and that it hence might not be open or extendible. I don't want to get locked in into some fancy mouse-clicking tool that is not a real general-purpose system.

So, my question is: would FileMaker be a good solution for my requirements described above? Can you recommend it to someone who has in-depth experience with databases and programming languages and wants his database system to be open and extendible? Does FM have a flexible API that I can use from outside? I have seen that there exists a python API, but I read that the Python API works only with the FileMaker's server version, which is too expensive for me (the price for the Pro version is fine). Does FM provide shell-commands, like e.g. Oracle's sqlplus? Is it possible to extend FM's GUI via Python or Apple's Swift?

Thanks & regards
Andi

Hi Andi and welcome to the FM Forums,

Your question sounds like you haven't purchased a copy of FileMaker yet? You ask a multitude of questions so I moved it here.

 

 

37 minutes ago, Lee Smith said:

Hi Andi and welcome to the FM Forums,

Your question sounds like you haven't purchased a copy of FileMaker yet? You ask a multitude of questions so I moved it here.

Hello Lee,

thank you for the welcome and moving my post to the correct forum - and yes, I have never used FileMaker. I am asking whether it might suit my needs.

Greetings

Andi

Hi Andi

You can download a Free Trial of FileMaker Pro 15 here http://info2.filemaker.com/FileMaker_trial_request.html

It has a time limit, but you should be able to get a feel for how it works. Check out the example files that is included 

HTH

Lee

5 hours ago, AndiKleve said:

 For custom-calculations in the GUI, I would like to use a standard programming language, preferably Python in order to re-use my already existing python libraries, or Apple's Swift.

If this description is what you mean by 'open', then: no.

FM's scripting is proprietary.  It does allow for running external things through plugins etc but you'd have to find one that you like to do this.  I think they exist for python but not for swift.

The size of it (20GB) is sorta meaningless, a better measure would the the # of records and the # of fields per table and a better understanding for us on the nature of the manipulations you'd expect to do on those records.  If you have 20 million records for instance and expect sub-second summary calcs on those then FM is not the tool for you.

FM does have a pretty good ODBC/JDBC and XML API.  The python API you have found is a wrapper around that XML API, that one only works through FMS.  xDBC works locally on a copy of FMP but the calls to it also have originate from that same machine.

There is a hybrid solution for you: FM does have native support for MySQL databases.  So you could keep your heavy-duty record manipulation outside of FM but still use FM as a GUI to your records.  Check out the ESS feature as it is called (External SQL Sources).

I'm guessing you will feel constrained by FileMaker. Maybe something like Xojo? Or R? Or just stick with Swift.

Hello,

many thanks for your answers - It seems that FM is not the right product for me, but I probably will test it via a test license.

Andi