Is Filemaker Pro as cool as everyone seems to think?

##I’ve been busy

Sorry I haven’t updated the news for a while. I’ve just been quite busy and
I’ve been trying to learn to use a new toy.

I just bought a copy of Filemaker Pro 4.0. I thought the database module in
Clarisworks was sufficient for my needs, but how wrong I was.

##It’s a Database…

Filemaker Pro is a wonderful database program that’s intuitive to use and
extremely powerful. It comes with many templates for small business and
personal use. This is a great way to organize any kind of information.

##No, it’s a Web Server…

Whoever came up with this idea is a genius. By combining a database engine
with a web server, displaying information on the web has become trivial.
But be warned. You really need a full time connection to the net to use
this feature.

##Carney’s Corner Reorg

So I’ve added a few things to Carney’s Corner.

First, you can now search the site. I accomplished this by using a great
suite for Frontier called the Crawler Suite. With this suite and Filemaker
Pro I can put the text for any website (including my own) inside a
Filemaker database. From there it was trivial (thanks to that wonderful Lasso technology) to put a simple interface on the database to allow the
site to be searched. I’ve been looking for something like this for a while,
and I really think it adds a lot to the Corner.

Second, just for fun I’ve started putting my golf scores in a Filemaker
database to help calculate my handicap. As part of that project I’ve put a
front end on that database so you can see my scores and find out what I
think about the various courses I’ve played.

Third, I’ve started putting together a database of interesting places on
the net that will eventually replay my [[Cool Sites]] section.

##Other things I’m looking for

If you take a look at the [[Genealogy]] section of Carney’s Corner you’ll see
a pretty extensive *database* of information on my relatives. I’m
looking for a template for Filemaker pro that will help me organize that
information for presentation on the web. If you know of anything, please
drop me a line.