I have to use FileMaker Pro all the time so I was eager to see how the new FileMaker Go app for the iPad worked. It makes taking your Filemaker databases with you an easy experience providing users with a simple but robust way of accessing and modifying data. It’s a great tool for those that frequently use databases for work, but need to shed the bulk of a desktop or laptop machine in the field. I can easily imagine this app being used on an iPad by a warehouse inventory clerk on the warehouse floor to update inventory numbers or by a repair man or some other mobile business person out in the field to create invoices and email them to clients. Users can work from databases loaded onto the iPad itself or connect to remote files hosted by a FileMaker Server or shared on a FileMaker Pro client.
What It Is and Is Not
Before delving into the details, let me mention what FileMaker Go is not. It is not an app for creating or developing a FileMaker database like FileMaker Pro or FileMaker Advanced. It is designed for finished products, i.e., databases that are ready to be deployed. The app does not gives users the ability to manage the database tables, fields and relationships, modify layouts, create or modify scripts or export records. Creation and modification still requires a computer.
FileMaker Go for iPad can only be used on an iPad. There is a separate app for use on an iPod Touch or iPhone. It can only be used on devices with iOS 4 or higher. You must separately have a copy of FileMaker Pro or FileMaker Advanced/Developer to create and modify databases. The FileMaker Go app can open any database file created with FileMaker 7 or later, but FileMaker notes that FMP and FileMaker Developer 7 are already out of product support and that product support on FileMaker Pro and FileMaker Advanced 8 and 8.5 ends September 23, 2010.
Getting Started
When you open the app, the first screen with which you are presented is a list of the available files. Files on the iPad are on the left while remote hosts and recently used remote files are listed on the right. You can add favorite remote hosts to ease access to hosted database files. FileMaker Go comes with a sample database, an inventory database for tracking office and electronic equipment.
FileMaker Go Opening Screen
To manage your databases on the device, you must connect the iPad to a computer with iTunes and an authorized FileMaker Go app in the iTunes app library. With the iPad connected via the USB cable, select the iPad device on the left in iTunes and then choose Apps tab at the top. Below the area where you sync your apps, you will have an area called “File Sharing.” You can select FileMaker Go from the list of File Sharing apps and a list of your iPad databases will appear on the right. To add an additional database to the device, click the “Add…” button below the list of files. To save a database on the iPad to your computer, select the database on the iPad you wish to save and click the “Save to…” button next to the “Add…” button. You cannot sync databases on the device to databases on the computer. If you make different changes on the same database file on the computer and the iPad, you will have to manually sync the files by exporting changed records from one copy of the database and importing them into the other, which can of course present its own set of issues, but this is no different than having multiple copies of a database on different computers.
The best solution for this is, if possible, host the database on a FileMaker Server or on a FileMaker Pro client machine. This allows for multiple people to makes changes to a single database that does not need to be synced later, with the standard caveat that two people cannot work on the same record at the same time.