Access vs. Filemaker - new problem not addressed here...

[yasij]

First time posting, hi.

Problem: My department has been merged with another. We use an Access database (each user had a license), the other department uses FileMaker. They want the databases merged, and want me to tell them which one to go with. This company is Mac-friendly, the IT dept supports FMP. I prefer Access, but choosing it simply because I like it, and I'll be the one designing it, isn't reason enough.

Those are my only choices. I have never designed in FMP, but since I have implemented numerous DB's in Access, I figure it won't be that hard to learn.

Quick profile of departments:
- ~ 20 users
- 4 or 5 tables
- few thousand records
- in love with metrics reporting and pretty graphs

TIA!

 

[DanJR]

I didn't think MS Access can run on MAC's. I hardly know anything about FMP, but have just started using it (we support both PC and MAC's). With respect to programming, I've found FMP to be much more restrictive than MS Access. However, you can serve webpages from FMP's built in webserver, in which case, the webpages interact with FMP via cdml (

http://www.cdml.org).

In saying that, if i was going to use webpages as a UI, then I would rather go with something like mySQL.

You can download the developer manuals at FMP's website (

http://www.filemaker.com).

Cheers,
Dan