Filemaker does interact well both ways with Excel (to and from). I
agree with Fred that Excel should work fine as far as stability and
size of documents.
One talking point is using the correct tool for what is being
accomplished. Fred is correct that most people don't use databases
properly (Excel is a spreadsheet program and not a true database
program). Excel does have a good search feature, but a database
search will be more flexible for data. Spreadsheets are used for
financial information because of their ability to re-calculate the
entire sheet automatically after a change to a single cell.
Another talking point will be the time to migrate (with review that
the migration was successful and all records transferred) and learn
a new application interface.
This question is intriguing always, so I took the time finally to
look up a simple definition. Here may be one more talking point for
Filemaker:
"FileMaker has compatible versions for both the Mac OS X and
Microsoft Windows operating systems (Excel is cross platform also)
and can be networked simultaneously to a mixed Windows and Mac OS X
user base. FileMaker is also scalable, being offered in desktop,
server, web-delivery and mobile configurations." (from Wikipedia)
Excel was early on subject to viruses, which has now been corrected
through the use of disabling macros. This might be a concern in your
office depending on the control of who is creating files and the
macros (small scripts) running the files.
/gayley knight
Fred Holmes wrote:
> Does Filemaker Pro allow for 1) exporting the database to Excel,
and 2) updating the database from Excel? A good one certainly
would. Do the others just read your database, or do they post to it
as well?
>
> I would think that Excel would do just fine, although I haven't
used one that large. (I'm working on getting there.) The real
advantage of Excel, that I have found, is that a lot of people have
it on their machine and know how to use it, while most people never
or seldom use a database, and struggle with its interface if they
want to do anything more than eyeball it. However, the
search/filter function of a real database is far superior to that
which is built into Excel -- do you need to do searches that only a
good database search/filter engine can do?
>
> Stability should be mostly dependent upon how much RAM and swap
file space you have in the machines that are running the spreadsheet.
>
> Fred Holmes
> At 03:13 PM 2/6/2008, Constance Warner wrote:
>> And does anyone else have any talking points on why it's a bad
idea to
>> replace a perfectly reliable, crash-proof database with an Excel
>> spreadsheet?
>>
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