SuperSkunkTXKSE

omasou said:

Sweeney no one cares about what you have to say or your opinion.

I care.  I don't like his Epic Games app store case, but he's RIGHT ON THE MONEY on this one.  "Authorities" will lie to gain access to your private data.  This technology will expand to other areas.  This is a terrible move by Apple.  Can you imagine if you are one of the poor fools who was a false positive?  Then law enforcement digs through your stuff with a warrant and found out you cheated on your taxes.  This is a mess.  Cloud storage can no longer be trusted as a source for privacy.

dee_dee said:

macplusplus said:

AppleInsider said:

For an example of fast-turnaround app creation using its software, Freitag says the company worked with a European hospital to make COVID-19 patient software in a single day. "They had a decision tree map drawn on paper for triage of Covid patients," he says. "[They would walk] into some central room in ICU and [go] through a decision tree to determine next steps."

That is true and what makes that true is Filemaker's flexibility which allows you to implement most of the program logic in the structure (schema).

Or one can write a shitload of Filemaker scripts to get the same result, as many newcomers do to prove how good coders they are.

Although a true relational database, It represents a significantly different paradigm than SQL based RDBMS. Once you catch the correct way of thinking, there is nothing that prevents you from writing half of the AppStore.

FileMaker was fast in the 80's and 90's - not today.  You can develop faster in almost any other technology.  You can only have 1 FileMaker developer working on your solution at a time - with Ruby or PHP, you can host the code on Github and have multiple people working on it at the same time.  FileMaker is outclassed in almost every way.

If your FileMaker solution is hosted on FM Server, you most certainly CAN have more than one person developing a file simultaneously.  FileMaker IS fast today.  Development is rapid because the tools and documentation are all there.  We've had administrative assistants who are bored with their jobs absolutely go to town with FileMaker developing all kinds of interfaces to automate their work-- without IT support.  Smart people can do almost anything with a tool like FileMaker, and that's what makes it so appealing.  I have 115 files on my FM Server that do all kinds of work tasks.  We have custom PHP files that interface with many of these solutions.  In fact, we use FileMaker + ODBC on the server to connect TO mySQL sources from other solutions because it's easier to search and manipulate the data in FileMaker than it is to pay a develop to make a custom web view.  Now FileMaker supports standard restful calls, so many things we have already developed can easily be shared with others.  And the security model in FileMaker is quite granular.  We can create accounts for entry level folks that just need to do data entry, or entry via iOS using FileMaker Go.  And we can also empower our power users with more authority to create custom reports/layouts and scripts.  YES you can do many awesome things with Ruby and other technologies that are newer and open source/free.  But if you want rapid apps that are stable, can be deployed in a variety of ways, including iOS and the web, are secure and well supported, FileMaker deserves a look.  It has my respect.

FileMaker has 18 versions under its belt. It's tried and true, stable and polished. I use it all the time to solve issues too complex for Excel. It has run most aspects of our business for over 20 years, and I am quite amazed how well it holds up and adapts to the changing information world. Sure, there are a lot of other options available now. But, if you need something developed quickly, that can be altered quickly, FileMaker is a pretty darn good choice. Looking forward to version 19 landing hopefully in May.