Today FileMaker Inc released version 9.0 of FileMaker Pro and Server. This is a huge release, probably the biggest since v7 came out a few years back.
Although the new debugger and scripting functions will be probably the biggest time saver for developers, by far the biggest feature is ESS. ESS stands for External SQL Sources. What this means is you can have a table of data in FMP that comes from an SQL ODBC data source, and treat it just like it was normal FileMaker data. So, your FMP database can add, delete, read and write to your back end SQL data source on top of it’s existing FMP data.
This will change the way FileMaker is perceived in some areas, and without a doubt will add to it’s user base. We’re looking forward to all of the possibilities this opens up with FileMaker, and showing this to our clients.
And we’ve updated BaseElements for all of the new FMP 9 features, so all of the FileMaker developers can starting using 9 straight away without compromising their ability to analyse and document their solutions. We’ve got a couple more updates of BaseElements scheduled before devcon in just 3 weeks time, so we’re going to be flat out like a lizard drinking over the next few weeks.