steve@violet.berkeley.edu (Steve Goldfield) (05/10/89)
Believe it or not, in an office I work with, we still have a CP/M Kaypro 2 running dBASE II. Recently, we were given a Mac Plus and I am going to move the databases on the Kaypro to the Mac. I had written menu-driven programs to drive all the databases, so my initial impulse was to move those, too, and make them compatible with dBASE III+ in McMax, which I have, or Foxbase, if I can get it. We also have Filemaker available, and our other Mac guru argues that we should move the simple address information databases with only a single table there so that the users, who aren't programmers, can use all its facilities without relying on a programmer. I can go along with that since most of these databases are pretty small, no more than one to two thousand in the biggest ones. I know that Filemaker is much slower than the McMax and Foxbase, but that isn't much of a factor for such small databases. However, we have one database (for donors) which has a table name and address information and another for gifts. My Filemaker friend isn't sure whether Filemaker can handle such a database and how easy it is to implement if it is possible. I know that I can follow my conversion strategy and replicate the dBASE II database in, say, McMax without a lot of work. So, my question is: does anyone know if Filemaker can handle the job? Are there any big drawbacks to using it? Are there any tricks to know about? Steve Goldfield