[Web4lib] Questions about filemaker pro?

[Alnisa Allgood]

At 10:50 AM -0500 12/23/05, Carmen Barnett wrote:
>I was wondering if anyone in a small, private library uses Filemaker 
>Pro to manage their library holdings? I am impressed with its 
>project and people management capabilities and was wondering how 
>this would translate to documents. Also, if anyone has had success 
>putting their Filemaker Pro files on the web I'd be interested in 
>knowing if it was easy or not.
>

FileMaker can easily manage library library holdings-books, media, 
and even electronic documents-small and large. Though very large 
holdings (over 100,000 records) are probably better off in an SQL 
database. FileMaker can handle it, but it eats up storage. For 
example, my 30,000 record MySQL database takes up 10MB of space; 
while my 5,000 record FileMaker database takes up 100MB.  They are 
storing different things, but in general a SQL file is basically 
text, and just takes up less space than FileMaker.

That said, I believe FileMaker use to ship with a template file for 
book/media management that was a good starting point. But with most 
things, depending on what you need, customization would most likely 
be required.

One of the very nice things about FileMaker is its ability to handle 
a variety of data formats; and with the power of plug-ins, you can 
even use barcode scanners to enter in data. It's been a while since I 
switched my personal library over to Delicious Library 
(non-FileMaker), but before that I was using a FileMaker solution.

My primary reason for switching was that Delcious Library offered 
direct data pulls from Amazon.com. Meaning, I could scan in the 
barcode and pull name, title, author, categories, description, image, 
etc. all from Amazon with practically zero manual data entry. (yeah 
Amazon API !!). Since my personal collection of books, videos, DVDs, 
and CDs is fairly large, not having to perform manual data entry was 
pretty key.

This type of functionality can be added to FileMaker, but I didn't 
want to have to script/code it in.

The benefits of FileMaker though is far larger flexibility. My 
FileMaker solution could store PDFs, .mov, .doc, and other files, 
directly in the system, or as a referenced file; allowed for tons of 
tags, and of course I could relate things however I liked. But less 
data entry was a higher priority, for me. I'm on the computer all 
day; the build up of back purchases that needed to be "entered" was 
over 200 items when I finally switched.

FileMaker to the web is both easy and complicated. In pure 
simplicity, FileMaker is so easy to place on the web, that most 
people never consider volume of hits, data redundancy, security of 
original data, etc. If your providing access to a small number of 
users (I say less than 10 simultaneous, or 100 overall), then just 
clicking the enable web-access of FileMaker and following the simple 
steps, will get you up in running in about 5-15 minutes.

But if your opening the solution to all your library patrons, which 
may have thousands of potential users, then consideration of things 
like FileMaker Server, a redundant infrastructure, and possible 
introduction of middleware (Lasso, Tango, or PHP) to alleviate stress 
on the system and increase security may be needed. Middleware 
software can group queries, allow data to be cached, and other 
performance enhancers.

Alnisa