[CS-FSLUG] Mac vs Linux business software question

[R. Thompson]

Thanks Frank,

    your input has been very helpful!  Since reading your e-mail I've
checked the filemaker website.  I'm encouraged by what I've seen so far,
especially if being able to modify or customize some of the software is
within my range of abilities.

          Ron T.

On Tue, 2005-05-03 at 13:02, Frank Bax wrote:
> At 02:20 PM 5/3/05, R. Thompson wrote:
> >      I'm back at it, looking at business software.  An interesting
> >product I've found is Mac based:
> >http://www.posdirect.com/proddetail.php?prod=SKFMP&PHPSESSID=717f604662e0e4c392481908f9d3adeb
> >I've spoken to the sales people and they tell me that it may be edited
> >using Filemaker 6 (a product I'm not familiar with).
> >It seems that Mac OS X is well spoken of on this list, and I have not
> >yet found affordable similar software for Linux.  Are there are opinions
> >on whether to use Mac software for this application?  What is Filemaker
> >6?  Is there an affordable similar Linux based product?
> 
> 
> In the days (1980's) before SQL database servers were available for desktop 
> machines, there were products like DOS-based programs like dBase and 
> FileMaker.  These products were both a database engine and a development 
> "language" - all in one package.  Basically the vendor is saying that their 
> product was developed with the FileMaker 6 "language" and data is stored in 
> FileMake (proprietary format) files.  If you purchase FileMaker 6 yourself, 
> you could then access the database directly (even though its in a 
> proprietary format).  This would allow you to "add-on" custom extensions to 
> the software, or access the files directly if existing reports are not 
> flexible enough.
> 
> In contrast to FileMaker, the file formats used by the dBase product were 
> freely available (or were they reverse engineered?), so lots of tools (both 
> free and commercial) were developed to read/write those files (now called 
> XBase) on various platforms.  I have sometimes come across copies of 
> FileMaker, but never ventured so far as to actually use it myself.  I did 
> several years of software development using one of the XBase tools.
> 
> Sorry, but I'm not aware of any low-cost small-business packages; although 
> I vaguely remember reading about some early FOSS attempts about 5 years ago.
> 
> Frank 
> 
> 
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-- 
Ron G. Thompson, |^|
Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, Canada
www.petomai.org   ron at petomai.org
"Who are these that fly as a cloud, and as doves to their window?" Is
60:8