Hello. I have a question. I checked another program called Alpha Five, its almost the same as Filemaker, but as i see it has some options that Filemaker doesnt have, or that at least i dont know how to make. It is very good at putting the site on the internet, and also you can put your own code into it. Somebody can tell me the advantages of having Filemaker, and if somebody knows Alpha Five, can you tell me what is the main difference? thanks!

Shouldn't you be posting this on the Alpha 5 support site??

You're going to be challenged to find objective information about this. If anyone has used both products extensively, maybe they should pipe up.

There's a product comparison on the Alpha site that would probably raise the blood pressure of any seasoned FileMaker developer, since it's about 80% inaccurate:

FileMaker vs Alpha

AFAIK FileMaker hasn't bothered to produce a product comparison with Alpha.

Don't believe everything you read.

If you want to know the difference between these two applications, you will probably have to do the research yourself. I recall this Application being mentioned in the past, and I don't remember any convincing arguments for even investigation this application. I've used FileMaker since it was a Flat File Application (circa 1988), and have tried other applications from the time to time, but have never found an easier application in which to do my developing in.

Lee

Actually, it looks like a great product, and Alpha 5 developers seem pretty gung-ho about it (though they tend to be FileMaker bashers, if blogs and posts are any indication). I'm just not fond of gross misinformation. Accurate information that your product is better, or at least information plausibly representing reality, I appreciate.

Example: When FM introduced ESS, Alpha sent out a press release stating that it was 600 times faster than FileMaker at processing data from SQL tables.

The benchmark they used was exclusively on the speed of sorts, which ESS definitely does not handle quickly, since it happens locally in FM and there's no local index to work off of. In many other respects ESS is an easier method for integrating, and in other SQL-related performance benchmarks, the two products would probably be competitive.

But if your goal is to say that "Alpha 5 blows FileMaker out of the water", then what you want to do, I suppose, is selectively pull your statistics and pretend they represent a complete picture. Pick one aspect where your product is superior (sorts) and use it to claim that your product is THAT much better in EVERY respect.

Then it's just so obvious that Alpha 5 is 600% better than FileMaker, isn't it?

Hey! im not affiliated to alpha five, i dont want any confusion. I have participated many times in this forum because i bought filemaker 9 pro. The thing is that i have to make a big database with many things that i have to record and show and i want to put it in the internet. I want to know if filemaker can do all that without any problem.

Very interesting thread.

i notice a newsletter from Alpha Five which serves to compare Alpha Five v9 and FM Pro ( and MS Access 2007

http://www.imakenews.com/alphasoftware/index000292667.cfm

In particular i saw on this page http://blog.alphasoftware.com/search/label/Comparison%20grid

which is a comparison to FM and MS Access that was independently prepared

I have been with FileMaker Products since '95.

I downloaded the demo for Alpha Five and became quickly annoyed with the product.

It lasted 4 days on my machine before uninstalling it. I could not find anything

that compared to FM 9's feature. Sorry Alfa Five.

interesting cover story in Eweek August 2008

http://www.eweek-digital.com/eweek/20080818_esp/?pg=43

The article highlights the strengths of alpha five and another tool servoy based on developers using the respective packages

btw i came across this demo on an alpha five ajax web app built against SQL server with security and reporting. The ajax makes this app perform really nicely

http://www.alphasoftware.com/alphafive/video/20080917echurch/

here is an updated spreadsheet comparing alpahf ive filemaker and access

http://www.gregoryfca.com/blogs/alpha/documents/Alpha_CompetitiveProductGrid_R_Draft_3.xls

In particular i saw on this page http://blog.alphasoftware.com/search/label/Comparison%20grid

which is a comparison to FM and MS Access that was independently prepared

Sure doesn't look like it was independently prepared. Not when alpha is hiring someone to prepare the grid.

I emailed the company to check on this and the person who was hired is a current journalist who writes for IDG. They assure me that this comparison was a straight up and down analysis and was not "doctored" in any way.

The spreadsheet which is a comparison of current versions of Filemaker, Alpha Five and MS Access is downloadable from http://www.gregoryfca.com/blogs/alpha/documents/Alpha_CompetitiveProductGrid_R_Draft_3.xls

More importantly - if the facts in the comparison are not accurate - lets point that out, if they are accurate then so be it.

Here is the other thing to ponder.

If alpha five is a better tool in certain circumstances - then check it and use it. If it is not, then don't use it. After all is, that not what living in free country is all about?

Personally, i make my living assisting clients and building the best solutions for them.

I am seeing more and more requests from clients for me to build secure and fast web apps as quickly and cost effectively for them as possible. So far Alpha Five fits the bill better than Filemaker, Visual Studio .NET, PHP and Ruby for me.

If and when a materially better solution emerges, I will consider it.

This way my clients best interests are served and in turn that this is in my best interests.

Regards

BronxScience

They assure me that this comparison was a straight up and down analysis and was not "doctored" in any way.

Of course it wasn't. And neither is this:

                           Apple          Orange

Considered a fruit          Yes            Yes

Colors                      Unlimited      1

Grown in orchards           Yes            Yes

Grown on apple trees        Yes            No

Edible                      Yes            Yes

Peeling required            No             Yes

Produces cider              Yes            No

Sprays juice when eaten     No             Yes

Seeds                       4 - 6          Up to 20

References:

1. Barone JE. Comparing apples and oranges: a randomised prospective study BMJ 2000; 321: 1569-1570

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/321/7276/1569

2. Sandford S. Apples and oranges: a comparison Annals of Improbable Research 1995;1(3)/

http://improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume1/v1i3/air-1-3-apples.html

Clarification:

My point is NOT that comparing Alpha to Filemaker is like comparing apples to oranges. I am saying that such comparison is worthless when the criteria are established by someone who may know everything about apples, but almost nothing about oranges.

that is very clever and amusing

i am not here to "pitch" you on Alpha Five or any other tool

all i am saying is that as someone, who has used both tools, and who is being asked by clients to create custom applications (desktop and fast web apps), I have found that Alpha Five is a more flexible, robust and versatile tool for rapid application development/reporting.

if i am right, then i have a competitive edge not only relative to other domestic developers BUT i also have an opportunity to compete against low labor rate offerings from offshore

On this topic check out Eweek August 2008 cover story called ARMED AND READY - Which is story about AJAX app dev. tools that let developers fight off the off shore threat.

http://www.eweek-digital.com/eweek/20080818_esp/?pg=43

I am not arguing with that. Certainly, Filemaker is far from being the ideal tool when it comes to developing Web applications as such (at least IMHO - I know some members here disagree, because they went out and did just that).

If someone asked me to develop a purely Web application, I would have to either turn them down, or acquire some additional skills. If I chose the latter, I would then run a comparison between Flash/Flex and PHP/MySQL/Javascript. Perhaps I should include Alpha Five in such comparison, too - but since it's Windows only, I won't.

When it comes to desktop/networked solutions (including solutions with a Web-deployed component), it's another story altogether. For me, the three crucial criteria here are:

1. Is it cross-platform?

2. Do I have to be a programmer in order to use it?

3. Can I create a usable application in an hour?

I don't know about #3, but the first two points take Alpha Five and Access off the table for me.

[ANGRY_ALEX]

Okay, a few words to anyone who is looking at this topic and actually thinking of taking it seriously.

DO NOT TRY TO USE AN APPLICATION DESIGNED PRIMARILY FOR BUILDING DESKTOP APPLICATIONS TO BUILD A WEB APPLICATION... SERIOUSLY

If the examples on the Alpha5 sites are the best that they could find (or worse put together themselves) then i honestly can't say i get the point. If you're smart you will spend a couple of weeks with php and more particularly a php framework (e.g. http://www.phpwact.org/php/mvc_frameworks) as well as a nice javascript/ajax framework like jQuery.

In terms of desktop applications in all honesty Alpha5 looks more complicated than Access 2003 did to the uninitiated - the only primary difference is the lack of the word "query" which seems to make things worse rather than better (I say 2003 because I recently took a look at Access 07 and it's actually half decent now - not that i plan on abandoning FM but still worth at least mentioning).

[/ANGRY_ALEX]

As for the article... all I can say is:

1) Web 2.0 is not synonymous with DHTML or RIA, never has been and never will be.

2) What the article actually seems to be pushing at is the idea that if you as a developer have access to a RAD tool or have worked to develop your own set of libraries etc. I.e. a dev environment that can actually shorten dev time at a high cost vs. standard dev time at overseas costs = comparably good pricing

3) What it seems to completely ignore is that people from overseas aren't stupid and that language barrier's aren't actually a barrier to technological development and / or concepts... The guys over in India are going to be just as capable of building "Web 2.0" applications as anyone else.

Look, the point is, Alpha 5 is just a design methodology with only a bit more graphical interface than what you'd get in a code only php framework... and their website uses an html table with an actual border setting of 1... honestly...

Anyway, here's what will happen:

Either

1) You will learn what you can of the framework realize its useless and move on after about 2 weeks

2) You will learn a lot of it, be excited it can build a webpage with some fields on it and costs only one easy payment of 995.00

3a) 2... and then: finally hit a wall you work out that Alpha won't be able to get over and try to hack your way through it only to realize that your hacks won't work and you spend more time hacking than doing anything else.

3b) 2... and then: finally hit a wall you work out that Alpha won't be able to get over, abandon it and have wasted all your time learning a tool that just isn't all that good. You then spend more time looking for alternatives

3c) 2... and then: You commit to the tool and use it and get by with what you've got. You can do a lot more than some people and a lot less than others with a tool that really no one has ever heard of...

Just so we're being even handed here... things I hate about FileMaker:

1) Corruption - will always be number one

Things I dislike about FileMaker

1) Cost (Fine for contract work even for corporates, problems arise if you ever consider doing commercial solutions) - interesting that the Alpha5 comparison omits licensing discount tiers that FM makes publicly available.

2) The Database Speed particularly as it relates to sorting and finding as the record quantity increases (eased slightly by ESS)

3) Issues with WAN based distribution (pretty poor speeds even in a sep model)

4) IWP is a bit of a joke, but for the amount of effort it takes to put it up, I can't say I haven't used it a few times (lol, i'm sure it's like Alpha5 ) This being said, it's eased significantly by PHP integration

Sorry to all, i'm in a bit of a particularly judgmental mood today.

DO NOT TRY TO USE AN APPLICATION DESIGNED PRIMARILY FOR BUILDING DESKTOP APPLICATIONS TO BUILD A WEB APPLICATION... SERIOUSLY

Hmm... Maybe you can help me reconcile this with:

http://fmforums.com/forum/showtopic.php?tid/193805/

Hehehe (I actually thought that might come up)

1) That wasn't built with FM tools or the FM GUI.

2) It was a proof of concept

3) It's actually being ported to MySQL(in all seriousness only because of sorting issues with that quantity of records - there is nothing else fundamentally wrong with accessing FM via the PHP API - hence my complaint above)

4) The original client wanted it that way...

5) FM is still being used via ESS and some of its own DB to manage certain other aspects of the site along with the larger task of reporting.

Edited September 28, 200817 yr by Guest

LOL.

2) It was a proof of concept

3) It's actually being ported to MySQL

Sounds more like a disproof of concept to me…

there is nothing else fundamentally wrong with accessing FM via the PHP API

Perhaps not, but IMHO there are no advantages to using Filemaker as the backend tp PHP, when there are no users that access the solution via FMP clients. On the contrary: it costs more to deploy, hosting options are limited, and maintenance skills are at premium. And that's without mentioning performance/corruption issues.

Edited September 28, 200817 yr by Guest

I do think most folks reading this thread are taking it seriously, so in the interests of getting more information it may be worth reading this review in TechRepublic -one of the leading IT publications - re Alpha Five v9

http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/programming-and-development/?p=679

Michael, I agree with everything you just said. Here's what FM PHP interaction is useful for:

You have a large FM solution and you want to bring a small section of it to the web for public consumption (that's actually the case with the voting site but it's still getting ported due to sorting time).

Bronx, it's probably worth mentioning that Alpha5 uses a SQL backend. And I'm not going to try and hunt down articles supporting the use of a database system that the majority of the known world relies on (I'm talking about SQL, not FM) ... naturally with the combination of php.

Stop trying to compare FM with Alpha5 for this purpose - everyone here has already ruled out FM as an appropriate tool for this namely an application who's sole point of distribution is web based.

Look I'm not trying to be a di*k. I'm trying to warn you in all seriousness that you do not want to go down this particular path. If you look at the SQL, PHP, Javascript / JQuery communities - they are massive and the resources for learning are massive - there are virtually no limits to what you can achieve with them. Speed of development is massively improved by user contributed plugins, classes and code snippets (for those in the fm world - really really cool custom functions / scripts that can build half your system for you). E.g. http://trirand.com/jqgrid/jqgrid.html - there are at least 15 versions of a grid object for jQuery and the code to integrate them doesn't really exceed past 25 lines of basic jQuery.

OK so FM is not good for web apps??

Just to make it clear - My endorsement of Alpha Fiveve v9 is based on it being ONE unified tool that offers:

Desktop app development

Web app development

AJAX support

a built in database or

It has strong SQL Support with direct connections to SQL Server, MySQL, DB2, Oracle, Sybase, Quickbooks, Postgres Plus, MS Acess, Oracle Lite

It has a built in security framework

It has a very flexible report writer

It has extensive visual tools for web and desktop application development

It has a very complete language as well

It has extensive email (inbound and outbound)

It has powerful ETL tools

At the end of the day there is no perfect tool, but i don't see the downside in being informed about alternatives

At the end of the day there is no perfect tool, but i don't see the downside in being informed about alternatives

Knowledge is power, being an informed consumer / prosumer and exploring every possible avenue - with proactive due-diligence, you need to review and examine the correct tool for the correct job or task at hand - the best solution may NOT be FileMaker.

The issue is that other tools or languages is outside the skill or comfort level of many FileMaker developers, and so any recommendation to the contrary may ultimately be a referral to someone else who can accommodate then needs of the client. Resulting in giving up a "potential" client. Some developers view every project as a nail and FileMaker the proverbial hammer, and as others have stated that that is very myopic view.

The alternatives for a developer is to A: learn the skills required to develop for the clients request and retain the client or B: become enterprising and refer / hire or subcontract the necessary talent to accomplish the same.

stephen

I emailed the company to check on this and the person who was hired is a current journalist who writes for IDG. They assure me that this comparison was a straight up and down analysis and was not "doctored" in any way.

Well, looking at the most recent version of the comparison, it's considerably better than it used to be. But:

1. The features are obviously selected so that the Alpha 5 column will read Y in every circumstance. An objective comparison would cover ALL features in every product.

2. The information in the FileMaker column, at least, has many instances of:

- incomplete data

- inaccurate data

- (possibly intentionally) misleading data

There may be a good faith effort on Alpha 5's part to at least be accurate on the features they intend to compare - this chart is much improved over previous versions.

But to call this objective is a stretch. It's commissioned work, by someone who clearly has never used FileMaker. He's just datamining stats from FileMaker documentation, some of it outdated, and some of it not even mapped correctly to what the features actually do.

Case in point, in a prior rev, FileMaker was described as having 0 functions. A FileMaker advocate had to point this out to them, which to their credit they updated...but they bundled script steps and functions into one bucket.

From this document you might also surmise that it's impossible to connect FileMaker to MySQL, to QuickBooks, etc. There's no understanding of the concept of Custom Functions (which effectively pushes the number of Functions to INFINITY) or of plugins, which can and does extend the general functionality of FileMaker in directions FileMaker can't even predict - note the incorporation of Adobe Flex components into FileMaker layouts demonstrated at the last DevCon by the Soliant folks, and the work by Todd Geist.

So the author has basically zero - and I mean ZERO - knowledge of the product he's reviewing.

Which means that no matter how well intentioned - and again, I have to question the objectivity of work for hire in the first place - this document is not an accurate representation of the products listed.

Frankly, there isn't an objective comparison out there. And to be fair, FileMaker's comparison chart with Access isn't exactly objective either.

Consumer Reports, so far as I know, hasn't gotten around to looking at this particular market, so I suppose you're just going to have to make do with what's available. If you're planning to use this as a marketing tool for your services - a perfectly fair use if your primary development is in Alpha - then this document is just fine.

But if you're using it for objective software selection for your clients and you're truly software independent in your decisions, I advise taking this with a grain of salt.

Colin

you make the following statement

" But if you're using it for objective software selection for your clients and you're truly software independent in your decisions, I advise taking this with a grain of salt."

Lets accept - that we follow your suggestion - i.e. that we dismiss what Alpha Five says on their web site.

Instead lets look at real apps built in Alpha Five

lets look at these demo's of applications built in alpha five

Desktop app (it takes a short while for this to load)

http://alphasoftware.com/alphafive/video/healthsoft/

Web app with Ajax

http://www.alphasoftware.com/alphafive/video/20080917echurch/

Bronx - who are you trying to convince? Us or yourself? No one has attempted to put up an argument that FileMaker is the right tool for what you're trying to achieve and we have only discredited a biased comparison.

Given that Alpha5 is so simple and straight forward and you seem determined to convince us that it's great, build a web based application and show us how good it is and how little time it took you.

I have! - and that is why I posting these positive posts on this re Alpha Five.

My only point from day one was to make FM developers aware of this Alpha Five tool. It was never to knock FM which is a known entity - especially to this board.

Sincerely

Colin

you make the following statement

" But if you're using it for objective software selection for your clients and you're truly software independent in your decisions, I advise taking this with a grain of salt."

Lets accept - that we follow your suggestion - i.e. that we dismiss what Alpha Five says on their web site.

Instead lets look at real apps built in Alpha Five

lets look at these demo's of applications built in alpha five

Desktop app (it takes a short while for this to load)

http://alphasoftware.com/alphafive/video/healthsoft/

Web app with Ajax

http://www.alphasoftware.com/alphafive/video/20080917echurch/

I'm not making a point about Alpha 5's capabilities, so I fail to see how demonstrating them matters. As I said at the beginning of this thread, it looks like a great product.

My main point is to dispute the assertion that the comparison grid Alpha 5 commissioned is in any way objective.

As a marketing tool, it's fantastic. Putting this document in the hands of a decision maker who's determining what software path to go down is a good marketing move, if you're solely an Alpha developer.

As an objective comparison, it falls somewhat short of fantastic, for the reasons I stated previously - it's at times incomplete, misinformed and possibly deliberately misleading. So when I say you should take a document like this with a grain of salt if you're software independent in your decisions, I mean exactly that.

Personally, I'm not software independent - I'm a FileMaker guy - but my company is - we also do .NET work and a bunch of other development environments. So when we propose solutions for clients, we try to pick the right development environment for the job...and if we don't have in-house expertise for the right development environment, we subcontract it to someone who does.

For that purpose - for software selection - the document isn't all that helpful, because it's weighted so that Alpha 5 is always the correct choice.