Hi Paul,
I have both FileMaker Pro v4 and v5 at home. My wife's school board uses v4
for doing report cards. I have been using v5 for the past year to manage
the registrations and training history ,etc. of all the Scouters (Scouts
Canada leaders) in our district.
So far I like the program. Someone else created the database but I get to
fix problems and create reports. I'm learning it as I go. At work I have
used both MSAcess 97 and Q&A. I hate Access and am a big fan of Q&A. As
with any othe DB Filemaker Pro takes time, patience and a real life
application to learn but it doesn't seem to have as large an aggravation
factor as Access.
Jim
*************************************
Jim Purser
Records and Information Officer
Kingston City Hall
[log in to unmask]
*************************************
-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Henry [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 2001-05-28 11:27 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Databases
Jim,
I've never used FileMaker in an archival environment, so I didn't try to
speak to its usefulness. I've downloaded a trial copy off the web, for
comparison purposes, and will let you know.
I'd be interested in learning how it's used at PAOC.
Paul
At 11:05 2001-05-28 -0400, you wrote:
>Paul,
>
>I believe you will find that FileMaker Pro can accomplish all of these
>tasks including the relational ones and has the advantage of being much
>easier to use.
>
>Jim Craig
>James D. Craig
>Archivist
>The Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada
>[log in to unmask]
>905-542-7400
>
>
>> ----------
>> From: Paul Henry
>> Reply To: A forum for discussion for the Archives Assoc. of
>> Ontario
>> Sent: Thursday, May 24, 2001 11:33 PM
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: new address
>>
>> At 15:01 2001-05-24 -0400, you wrote:
>> >I have been looking at Inmagic for archive software. Our school
>> supports
>> >Microsoft Access and the head of our IT department believes that we
>> should
>> >use it.
>>
>> Here's a quick comparison between the two:
>> http://www.tdm.com.au/compare.htm
>>
>> While the seemingly trite "because it's Microsoft" may work for some,
>> you'll note that DB/Textworks (Inmagic) has features better suited to
>> archival tasks, such as:
>>
>> Indexing and browsing by field
>> Boolean searching
>> Stop words and other sorting functions
>> Indexing modes, logging, and reporting
>>
>> And most importantly:
>> Unlimited field lengths, all fully indexed by term and keyword.
>>
>> The DOS version is free. The Windows version is available under
>> various
>> licensing arrangements.
>>
>> The only serious bugaboo in Inmagic (also not available in Access
>> without
>> some programming) is the lack of recursively relational linking. By
>> this I
>> mean the ability to store multi-level descriptions (fonds, series,
>> file,
>> item) in the same database file and automagically display them
>> hierarchically in reports. For that, you need GenCat (Eloquent
>> Systems).
>> GenCat has its own problems, but I used it successfully at the
>> National
>> Archives for a number of years.
>>
>> I hope this helps you convince your IT department to let you use
>> Inmagic.
>>
>> Good luck.
>>
>> Paul
>>
>
>
|
