I need some help and advice setting up a database for an academic project. I have just purcahsed Filmaker Pro7 software but have never used it before.

I am about to begin a research project looking into children's early reading books and the words that they contain. I am specifically interested in how frequently the most common 500 words in the English language appear in those books. So, what I need to be able to do is to type in the text from approx. 1000+ reading books and then be able to analyse the frequency of those 500 words across all inputed texts. I want to further analyse the frequency of words according to:

a)the publisher

the level of difficulty of the texts (Level 1 or 2 or 3 etc.)

I've looked at a few of the templates that come with the software but can't see one that would do the job and I don't know how to begin moifying them or creating my own.

I was wondering whether anyone knows which template would fit the bill or how to adapt one or make my own. Also where I might get some training on using the software and how much it is likely to cost? I also thought that I might engage the service of a professional to create the database for me but don't really want to go to a huge amount of expense.

Any help or suggestions would be most welocme.

Thanks

Karl

Karl:

Welcome to the Forums.

I don't imagine any of the templates will be of any help here. You'll need to do this from scratch, but it won't be too too much work - although it may take a fair amount of knowledge of FileMaker, in which case you may want to consider farming out the actual creation of the solution. Your posting may well draw the attention of other professional developers - there are quite a few of us here at the Forums.

The best place to begin would be to put together your requirements, as precisely as you can, whether you are going to do it yourself or contract it out. I, for one, would welcome a chance to bid on the job.

As far as training, your best bets are:

1. Ignore the manuals that ship with FileMaker and get a good book on the subject. I'd recommend "Special Edition Using FileMaker 7".

2. See if there's a local FileMaker User Group, which will be able to find you local training.

3. Dig through these Forums for things that sound like what you want to do.

4. Ask lots of questions.

-Stanley