BYTE.com
RSS feed

Newsletter
Free E-mail Newsletter from BYTE.com
Email Address
First Name
Last Name




 
    
             
BYTE.com > Chaos Manor > 2005

Data Wrangling with FileMaker

By Jerry Pournelle

April 4, 2005

(Data Wrangling with FileMaker :  Page 1 of 1 )



Column 296 (Continued from the Previous Week)

Data Extraction and Publishing for Neophytes

A few months back (Dec 2004), we discussed using MyODBC to extract data from a live MySQL database. MySQL is the guru-friendly open-source SQL database, very popular for back-end data on web sites, and powerful enough that some businesses rely on it for enterprise-level data. It still doesn't scale to the same heights as Oracle or SQL Server, but you're probably relying on it already, to collect web site statistics or process your online credit card orders.

MyODBC is the open-source link Open DataBase Connector (ODBC) that provides a data source for extracting from MySQL; you can read about or download it here. In December, we talked about using MyODBC to extract data from MySQL into Access and Excel; the same tools allow you to extract data into FileMaker, and similar ones from FileMaker into Excel. As with almost every software task involving multiple applications, data extraction is more complex than it should be.

FileMaker 7: A Database for the Rest of Us

FileMaker has been around for over twenty years—first sold by Nashoba Systems, it was later absorbed into Claris, a part of Apple. Nashoba first developed "Nutshell," a database whose very existence I had forgotten until reading a history of the company; Nutshell was sold by Leading Edge, a hardware/software marketing company now long gone. In the present day, FileMaker Inc. (still a division of Apple) has been selling Version 7 since mid-2004; it's much improved over previous versions, but it's still very cross-platform (at least, Windows and Mac), and is still the most user-friendly database we've tried.

FileMaker is unique in how simply an average Joe can make relatively complex, and easily used, databases and share them among users, and in how powerful the final results are.

 Page 1 of 1 


BYTE.com > Chaos Manor > 2005
Dr. Dobb's Media Center

2008 International Mathematica Conference
Dr. Dobb's interviews Wolfram Research's Theo Gray, co-founder and Director of User Interfaces, and Roger Germundsson, Director of Research and Development, about the upcoming 2008 International Mathematica Conference.

How Do You Do Nightly Builds and Tests when there is No Overnight? Software Production in a Geographically Distributed Environment
Attend this Webcast and find out how to overcome common build-test-deploy challenges that affect all members of a distributed team, including: <ul> <li> Communication difficulties, because of time-zone and cultural differences</li> <li> Workflow challenges, like lack of documented procedures and build and test handoff problems</li> <li> Slow build and test cycles, broken builds, and other factors that hamper distributed team productivity</li> </ul> Thursday, September 25, 2005 " 11am PT / 2pm ET </p>

BYTE.com Store

BYTE CD-ROM
NOW, on one CD-ROM, you can instantly access more than 8 years of BYTE.
 
The Best of BYTE: Volume 2 - Heuristic Algorithms
The Best of BYTE: Volume 2 - Heuristic Algorithms
In this volume of Best of BYTE, we explore the emergence of some heuristic algorithms. Although we have only scratched the surface of this intriguing subject, we hope we've suggested the potential of the synthesis of heuristics and algorithms.

© 2008 Think Services, Privacy Policy, Terms of Service, United Business Media Limited
Site comments: webmaster@byte.com
Web Sites: BYTE.com, dotnetjunkies.com, Dr. Dobb's Journal, SD Expo, Sys Admin, sqljunkies.com, Unixreview



MarketPlace
simple helix is the most trusted name in the hosting industry! Join us and host with the experts!
Sign Up & Get Full Access To The Definitive Online Book Collection With SkillSoft's Books24x7�.
Helps Employees Develop & Hone New Technical Programming Skills. Sign Up & Get Full Access.
Automatically capture customer crash data, no debugger required. Support for .NET, C++, OS X, Java.
Understand C/C++ code in less time. A new team member ? Inherited legacy code ? Get up to speed faster with Crystal Flow for C/C++. Code-formatting improves readability. Flowcharts are integrated with code browser. Export flowcharts to Visio.
Wanna see your ad here?
 

web2