Customer Reviews

Filemaker Pro 5 Bible

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I'm a new user of FileMaker Pro 5, FileMaker Pro 5 Bible is easy to understand and good for text reference. I think FileMaker Pro 5 Bible is the only book you can depend to use the software effectively. It covers all of the program's steps that anyone can understand. FileMaker Pro 5 Bible is good for novice user.

I was VERY disappointed in this book. I have the 4.0 book and this isn't much different. I was looking for how to use the new value-lists and found nothing. I wanted to get into validation of my data using calculations and there is nothing, and ODBC a big FM 5 feature is called beyond the scope of the book!

We need a real Bible not a novice book. This book is great if you're just getting started but it's by no means the "Bible".

To be fair, I did not read this page-to-page, but spent a few hours poring over it along with a few other books on Filemaker Pro in the bookstore.

Unfortunately I have yet to find a book on Filemaker that goes significantly beyond the manual to explain and exemplify some of the more powerful features of Filemaker, say, the calculation fields and scripting. I'm a regular observer of the Filemaker forums online and can understand why they are so popular.

I agree with the first reviewer that the book should not simply target beginners, as Filemaker is simple enough already to waste time on intuitive tasks.

This for the true bibliophile.

I have usually found the "Bible" books to be fairly complete to allow for progression from Novice to Advanced user. However, this book provides only remedial information and most of this can be confusing. It does not address, other than a brief sentence, two-way relations, self-joins and other aspects of relational databases that make them relational.

I agree with the other reviews. This book is not for the serious developer...it does not cover any real-world situations and rarely goes "beyond the user manual." It sticks right close the user manual, in fact. It doesn't cover important areas like integrating/using FileMaker plugins, barely nrushes on ODBC connectivity and has no useful info on GUI development. There's a lot of great tips out there for this! Also, it'd be nice to have a resources section with lots of the best Web sites and resources out there that I could turn to.

As a professional FMP developer the book has been of no use to me. If you are new to FileMaker, this would be an excellent reference, otherwise don't waste your time. Also, do NOT buy this book if you own any of the other FMP Bibles. A great deal of the text is taken directly out of the previous versions of FMP Bible.

This book is good for beginners, but simply does not have anything for more advanced developers,....

I am a long time FileMaker Pro user and this book has been a huge help. It provides all the basics and explains what is new about FileMaker 5. It also gives information on many advanced FileMaker techniques like scripts, functions, and web interface. Schwartz states things simply and logically, and makes them easy to understand.

Using this information, our nonprofit organization has been able to save thousands of dollars in the last few months by managing mailing lists, controlling duplicates when combining lists, and pulling target groups.

How is this a filemaker pro bible? It never goes beyond filemaker pro, the basics. The basics are also in the Filemaker Pro manual, which comes with the software at NO additional cost. Actual intermediate and advanced techniques with scripts and calculations are never covered.

As someone who has spent way too much money on Filemaker Pro books at this point, the money on this book, and most of the others has been a big waste.

Apparently Scriptology, Filemaker Pro Demysitfied by Matt Petrowsky and John Osborne, is the ONLY Filemaker Pro book available that covers actual Filemaker Pro techniques, calculations, and scripts. The Filemaker Pro Bible just doesn't do that.

Filemaker can be very powerful, but from the bible, you would never know.

Read the manual, buy Scriptology, and check out the filemaker newsgroup. Leave the bible alone.

If you've got the 4.0 Bible, this book is a complete waste of money. Might suffice for a newbie.