I was talking with a business friend of mine the other day, talking about reports; Excel spread sheets and the like. I mention that I started using FileMaker because I could import Excel spreadsheets and enter my other data.

He said there is a guy he knows in his office building who is developer in both FileMaker and 4D. I

Hi Bill,

4D is a database from the same era (early 80's) as FileMaker and Helix. It uses a programming language similar to Microsoft Access (also a database) and requires a greater learning curve than FileMaker.

hj

Go here and read about it:

http://4d.com/

And good luck. As hj stated, it does have "greater learning curve than FileMaker"

Lee

Good Morning Lee, it's good to see you lurking on the ol forum this morning.

Have you ever used 4D?

hj

Hi hj

I have never developed in it, but I have tried it a couple of time. It is too confusing for me, and I have never outgrown FileMaker. I have always found a way to do whatever I need to do in FM.

How about you?

Lee

Hi Lee,

I dabbled with 4D about the same time as Helix. I like 4D, it has a lot going for it and has become more flexable over the years. FMP is good for some things and 4D is better for others. But FMP still wins in the battle of ease of use.

hj

It started out as 4th Dimension from Acius, promoted by Guy Kawasaki, a familiar name to Mac veterans. I went to a demo he did years ago at PMUG here in Portland. He wanted to show how robust 4D was, that it would save your data even if the power went out. He yanked the cord out of the back of the SE30 that was running 4D... and sparks flew out, and smoke! It was quite amusing, and embarrassing to Guy. But he assured us, once the logic board was replaced, that data would all be saved!

4D is much more targeted to developers, as compared to FileMaker, which is marketed as an end-user product. It has a lot of fans, and of course has bugs like all software, but in general is considered to be a very good, mature, stable database. It's cross-platform and has a large assortment of add-on products (like FileMaker plugins) and an active developer community.

I actually considered switching to 4D a couple of years ago, but think about it: if you're going to learn a whole new programming language, why not choose one where there's actually a demand for it, like say, Java?

I've met 4D in 1992 and it was slowest software in known universe.

It also had the most idiotic distributor in Czech Republic so I wasn't trying hard enough.

Their product range was the most confusing price list and I didn't know where to start.

The company is probably doing OK. AFAIK they bought Web*.