Here's the thing. FileMaker Pro is a quietly spectacular app: it's for creating databases, but for three decades now it has also created careers. There are people whose entire working lives have been devoted to creating databases in FileMaker Pro, and they do it for lone freelancers, corner shop businesses, and even corporations. Now, a new FileMaker Pro 14 has been released for the app's 30th anniversary, and with one caveat it is hugely recommended.

The caveat is important but first, this is what FileMaker Pro does that is so good. It is a system for you to build databases that take all your information -- random jottings, invoices, full-on financial details, book research facts, and simply everything -- and form something useful. One system that you can use to look up who hasn't paid you this week, or which tells you what CDs you've loaned out to that friend who'll never give them back.



What's good is that you can do all this through the same system, and once you know how it works, you can create ever more complicated databases. Parts of the BBC have been run on FileMaker databases: this is seriously powerful stuff.

What's great about it is this idea of it being a quietly spectacular app. Open it up and there isn't a lot to see. Talk to someone about databases and they'll back away from you: this is not thrill-a-minute, headline-making stuff. Yet, typically you start using FileMaker Pro because you are required to by your company. or because you've correctly been persuaded that it is what you need. Once you start using it, though, you fall for it hard: FileMaker Pro is replete with nice, clever touches that go beyond making your work easier and instead become what you talk about at parties (see earlier note about backing away).

If your previous experience of a database is Microsoft Access on PCs, then you can reasonably expect to find that FileMaker Pro isn't as powerful. What you won't reasonably expect is the truth that you'll enjoy using FileMaker Pro just about infinitely more than you do Access. Infinitely is a strong word, but it's meant to be: Access has users, FileMaker Pro has fans.

Let's turn the spigot down on the gushing enthusiasm for one moment, though, as there continues to be one issue with FileMaker Pro that -- depending on your needs -- is somewhere between an issue and a problem.

This new release is actually called the FileMaker 14 Platform because it radically improves the web version of FileMaker, and it considerably improves the iOS version as well as nicely revising the desktop editions. Yet to use a database of yours on both, say, a Mac and an iPad, you still have to go to some lengths.

To have a database that you, your colleagues or your staff and minions can use, wherever they are, on whatever machine they happen to have, and for all of them to be doing all of this at the same time requires work. Specifically, you either need to host the database yourself, or pay someone else to do it.

Unquestionably, it's better to host it yourself, because then it's all entirely under your control, and you can do that readily enough if you also buy FileMaker 14 Server. That can be bought as a subscription that only costs $29/month,, but you really need to run it on its own Mac. Plus running it is a bigger job than knocking up the odd little database for yourself: there's a reason people have ended up with careers in this stuff.

It's just that we'd just like the option to save our work to Dropbox and run it from there.

You can completely see why FileMaker wouldn't recommend that, and you can see how it could mean you'd lose FileMaker's ability to cope with multiple people changing the same data at the same time. Still, if you're going to require people to have some technical knowledge to do this hosting, it'd be good to let those technical people make up their own mind about using Dropbox or the like.



It'd also be good to not gloss over this issue quite as much as FileMaker's website and promotions do. The company very reasonably makes a big deal of how good its new iOS app FileMaker Go 14 is, but you need FileMaker Server 14 or a hosting service to use it as fully as they propose. Similarly, new to FileMaker 14 Platform is an excellent service called WebDirect, which creates a web-based version of your database that you can access anywhere -- if it's hosted on FileMaker Server 14.

WebDirect is impressive: it makes your browser look and work and feel like the regular FileMaker Pro software on your desktop. It's not a way to put out a database online for just anybody and everybody to use, as you need licences, but it is a way to quickly get your database to people wherever they are in the world. It's a way to save them having to install the desktop application.

We've had less time to really check out FileMaker Go 14 so far, as the final shipping release took longer to propagate across the App Store than FileMaker expected. From our initial look, though, it has a rather nicely designed iOS 7/8 style, and it handled our test databases fine. FileMaker Pro lets you create one database for, say, recording your expenses, but many different layouts: the same data can be shown in different designs on Mac, iPad, iPhone, or more. That's aesthetically nice, but it's also practical: with that expenses example, for instance, you probably want the iPhone one to just let you quickly enter details on the run. When you get back to your Mac, that's when you want to see a history and analysis of how much you've spent.

You do that layout design on your desktop, and this is what we did with our databases: we created, designed, tested, changed and edited them on OS X Yosemite first. Heavy lifting needs to be done on the desktop version. Then we emailed the database over to our iPads, and began using them to actually enter some data. Those people whose careers are spent in FileMaker just shuddered: doing it this way could mean that our data stays on our iPad and nowhere else.

It stands a chance. We made one database that compiled various bits of data, generated an invoice in Word, and then emailed that out for us: we could get and send data easily. To get the data plus the database, to back up everything so that we could -- for instance -- move it all from our iPad to our iPhone, we could AirDrop the lot around.

You know how to do this, but you still have to think about it. If you have employees, then they have to think about it- and sooner or later someone won't. If your company is even big enough that you just have someone to share the coffee making, then you need to look at FileMaker Server 14.

If you're a one-man or -woman band, then you don't: you can get away with just remembering to AirDrop backups from your iPad to your Mac, you can get away with just remembering to only ever enter data on one device at a time. That rather goes against the idea of this being a database solution for everyone, and instead it means you have to have a little technical knowledge or at least technical awareness.

This probably sums up FileMaker Pro: it is easy to use, but only in comparison to Access. The new FileMaker 14 Platform is even easier to use, but only in comparison with version 13. It is the database for the rest of us, but the rest of us have to be willing to put in some effort here.

We think it's worth it. More than worth it. Look at that invoicing example: it took us a fair time to set it all up the first time, but thereafter, producing and sending an invoice was so quick that we actually send invoices on time now. Back around FileMaker Pro 11 or so, we researched a book using a database we created: it tracked how much of the outline was done, it held all the interview text and audio we recorded, it let us cross-reference everything. If an interviewee mentioned "X," we could see in an instant who else knew about that.

It was a boon, even then, in version 11 -- and there are tools now in FileMaker Pro 14 that we'd have killed or at least maimed for. For instance, we did end up having many different databases for different jobs, but FM14 now has Launch Center for easily seeing and choosing which you want. It has Script Workspace: we looked at that and had to have a bit of a sit down. We have a magazine research database that is stuffed full of buttons -- you can create buttons in FileMaker Pro -- that do all manner of things, like setting off that compiling the invoice. Pretty much every button has a script behind it, saying what should happen, and now creating those scripts is substantially quicker and easier.



Script Workspace will look familiar to you if you've ever used Workflow, Apple's Automator or Keyboard Maestro: your options are clearly displayed, and you can select what you need in the order you need them.

We're reaching that point in the party when you've started backing away, haven't we? You've got the gist: FileMaker Pro is very powerful, very good, and it needs effort from you but maybe less than before, and it's certainly worth every minute you put into it.

It's 30 years old, though. It doesn't feel like it: other long-standing software such as Final Draft, for instance, do seem to show their age, but FileMaker Pro is a fast, responsive and modern. Back in 1985, FileMaker was this tiny little application that wasn't really all that much better than a spreadsheet for holding your data. Three decades on, it is a quietly spectacular roar that is powering the business of individuals and corporations.

It's not so much the little database that could, it's the little database that did.

FileMaker Pro 14 requires OS X 10.9 or later, and costs $329 from the official site. There are subscription and upgrade deals, plus a trial version. The official site includes FileMaker Pro 14 Advanced, which adds extra tools for those folk whose careers are in this, and FileMaker Server 14, which we've gone on about already. You'll also find Windows versions there. FileMaker Go 14 requires iOS 8.1 or later, and is a universal app that is free on the App Store.