[Pythoncard-users] Thinking about Filemaker replacement

[normanwinn <nor...@on...>]

Hi,

I make an apology first. After an initial burst of activity, I  haven't 
been doing much in actually using PythonCard. This doesn't mean my 
interest has not been fired. However, my initial interest was my quest 
to see if a Filemaker replacement might be possible.

What I have been doing is looking around in the open source community 
for the various components that might contribute to such an enterprise.

Database engine: 
I have messed around with Firebird and it seems OK. Then I noticed that 
sqlite - that I had been avoiding - is not too fussy about storage types 
and requires no pre-definition of data size. This would appear to offer 
a potential fit to the way Filemaker operates on data. The problem with 
sqlite - at least I think it is a problem - is that it is does not 
follow the client/server model. However, for the smallish companies that 
dominate the Filemaker client base, sqlite may service requests rapidly 
enough for this not to be a problem.

What may be being worked on is a front end queuing mechanism that will 
serve requests to sqlite. It appears that sqlite might evolve towards a 
client/server model.

Sqlite is moving to version 3. This gives a choice of specifying data 
types or not which makes it an even better match for how Filemaker 
represents data.

A reporting tool:
Kevin Altiss found the excellent discussion on Filemaker replacement on 
slashdot. One comment in this thread made me realise how important an 
area Filemaker's reporting is. That thread also led me to DataVision 
(http://datavision.sourceforge.net/) which I haven't tried but looks a 
very promising report tool that would be much more powerful and flexible 
than that of Filemaker.

Extracting/converting data from Filemaker:
pyFilemaker seems to extract as much as FM is willing to give. An 
interesting project in PythonCard would be to attempt to generate a 
default database front end from this information. This would only be 
bare bones compared with how the Filemaker front end would look, but 
often, having a place to start is enough to get one going.

Well, this is not an exhaustive list of what would need to be done but I 
thought it worth giving this report as the initial discussion seemed to 
generate interest.


I must add in conclusion that I am enjoying learning Python and have 
produced a tool I use every day in relation to Filemaker. It is called 
'xpdfBatch.py' (or xpdfBatch.exe) and produces this output when invoked 
from the command line with the '-h' option:

xpdBatch.py - extracts text from pdf files in current folder.
             Depends on pdftotext from Glyph & Cog, LLC:
                 http://www.foolabs.com/xpdf/

    Usage: with no arguments processes pdf files not already done
           If argument is:
           a pdf file: (must be quoted if containing spaces) process 
that file
           'all': (without the quotes) process all pdf files. Any '.txt' 
files
           existing will be overwritten.
           -h: show this help

I use it as Filemaker prints scripts only as pdf. 
Haven't tested it on the Mac yet but will.

I have been very impressed by the patience and helpfulness of this 
community,

Norman