As someone who has used both -- and echoing many of Robin Hall's comments -- FileMaker will make many things much simpler to implement, though that comes at the price of some flexibility: there are certain things that FileMaker won't do easily. Still, I would recommend FileMaker 99 times out of 100 for projects like this and indeed we use it here at TMO and BackBeat Media for our internal back-end contact tracking and invoicing.

Given the size of the parade operation it says a lot for FileMaker. I hope other companies take notice.

To say just "Macy's" in the headline and then "Macy's Parade & Entertainment Group" in the story is misleading. If it was all of Macy's that would be HUGE, but it's not.

Access has grown, over the years, into this unwieldy beast. Ten years ago, it was simple enough; if you wanted to build a database (a card file), you put together a form, placed your fields on it, chose data types, and then created different reports. Now, you have tables, columns, primary keys, relation integrity, queries, SQL... Today, MS Access is neither here, nor there; it is not a true standard SQL RDBMS, and it surely is no longer a simple and reasonably intuitive desktop tool.

Filemaker has grown over the years as well, but its mission remained clear: simple, intuitive GUI interface, with plenty of hand-holding and useful templates.

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vasic wrote:
Access has grown, over the years, into this unwieldy beast.

It's an interesting corollary to Excel. IMO Excel is almost to where Access was 10 years ago, with the corresponding difficulty and complexity.

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Anonymous wrote:
To say just "Macy's" in the headline and then "Macy's Parade & Entertainment Group" in the story is misleading. If it was all of Macy's that would be HUGE, but it's not.

Duly noted. Finding the right balance between headline length and content can sometimes be tricky. I revised the headline, and thanks for keeping me on my toes.

Jeff

Problem is it does say Macy's Parade in the headline.

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Guest wrote:
To say just "Macy's" in the headline and then "Macy's Parade & Entertainment Group" in the story is misleading. If it was all of Macy's that would be HUGE, but it's not.

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Guest wrote:
Problem is it does say Macy's Parade in the headline.

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Guest wrote:
To say just "Macy's" in the headline and then "Macy's Parade & Entertainment Group"in the story is misleading. If it was all of Macy's that would be HUGE, but it's not.

It may have been changed. That's one of the downsides to posting messages pointing out errors: when the error is corrected, the message pointing it out stays. It's far better to use email--click on the author's name at the top of the article.

As a data-warehouse specialist, specialising in SAS with bits of Sybase, Oracle and SQL Server (MS's one and only decent product, IMO), I cringe when I find Access databases proliferating in organisations. We call it shadow IT - and a little learning can be a dangerous thing. This is not being patronising - if one is trying to ensure data quality, then amateur extraction, processing and (ouch!) re-loading of data brings the whole reliability of the system into serious question.

To be fair, the same can be said for Filemaker. It's a quality product, it has an interface that fits much better into the concept of relational database design than does Access (I've been using Access tangentially for years, and I still can't get my head around it), but I would still argue that it's not an enterprise database. I'm perfectly happy to be called on this one - Dave, you're the gun designer in this area!

However, hook it up via ODBC to a big iron data server and I think you've got a great way of presenting data to users. Hook Access up in the same manner, and the data presentation paradigm makes the reporting from the data prone to serious misinterpretation.

With all due respect, I think you are all missing the point!

First of all, why don't they use a dedicated project management application? Why reinvent the wheel? If MS Project or its equiv. can manage design and construction of a new aircraft, it can certainly manage the Macys parade!

Second, Access and FM are both RDBMS products (relational database management systems). Both can be used to create "card file" flat-file databases or complex relational databases. Both can build SQL-standard queries, either graphically or through SQL statements. In short, either program is capable of building more than a adequate application to manage any sized parade. If any app built with either tool doesn't work, it is the fault of the developer. If the developer is unable to master primary keys and relationality in either program, that developer is incompetent.

Third, FM's web-deployment capabilities are stronger; but any weakness in Access in that area surely wan't addressed by moving the application to a spreadsheet!!!

Moral of story: learn relational database theory before using any RDBMS to build anything more complex than an index-card like flat file database.