Best options for offline consolidation of multiple databases?
November 11, 2022 1:13 PM Subscribe
I am trying to help a friend get a number of different databases, some made using an older product that are increasingly non-functional, into a single format. He wants these to remain offline / out of the cloud. I have some questions about the best way to do this.
BACKGROUND:
The databases were made using:
* Apple Numbers
* Excel
* FileMaker Pro 6
* Google Sheets
The most problematic of these are the FileMaker Pro ones, created using a product that's now 20 years old, and playing increasingly poorly w/recent versions of macOS.
These are perhaps the highest value of the databases, unfortunately, and one of them has a large # of images associated w/it that apparently not come through in attempts to export/upload into Numbers. He's happy with Numbers as a solution if it continues to meet certain criteria, however.
QUESTIONS:
1. Is there a way to get the FileMaker databases w/their images into Numbers? Or is manually re-adding them the only option here, if we settle on Numbers as a solution?
2. How likely is Numbers to remain a freestanding piece of software vs. a cloud application? He's adamant about not using cloud storage for the data, so if Apple is trending in that direction, we'll need to look for something else (suggestions are welcome).
The goal here is to get everything in one format that's likely to remain supported and usable offline for at least the next decade, and easily + fully exportable after that. Thanks in advance, Hivemind!
BACKGROUND:
The databases were made using:
* Apple Numbers
* Excel
* FileMaker Pro 6
* Google Sheets
The most problematic of these are the FileMaker Pro ones, created using a product that's now 20 years old, and playing increasingly poorly w/recent versions of macOS.
These are perhaps the highest value of the databases, unfortunately, and one of them has a large # of images associated w/it that apparently not come through in attempts to export/upload into Numbers. He's happy with Numbers as a solution if it continues to meet certain criteria, however.
QUESTIONS:
1. Is there a way to get the FileMaker databases w/their images into Numbers? Or is manually re-adding them the only option here, if we settle on Numbers as a solution?
2. How likely is Numbers to remain a freestanding piece of software vs. a cloud application? He's adamant about not using cloud storage for the data, so if Apple is trending in that direction, we'll need to look for something else (suggestions are welcome).
The goal here is to get everything in one format that's likely to remain supported and usable offline for at least the next decade, and easily + fully exportable after that. Thanks in advance, Hivemind!
Best answer: Of the four products you have listed, only one Filemaker is actually a relational database. The others are all spreadsheets.
Filemaker is still supported and can be purchased here. Because the fies are so old you will need to convert them to Filemaker 11 and then again to the latest version.
Assuming the Filemaker database is actually setup as a relational database, then no it cannot be converted into Apple numbers. At least not without losing all the relational features.
The fact your friend hasn't updated the software in 20 years makes me think he is not very technical. Your best option is going to be hiring someone with good experience in Filemaker who can audit what you have and give some advice.
Jumping 8 versions of the software may prove to have a steep learning curve.
posted by Lanark at 4:16 PM on November 11, 2022 [2 favorites]
Filemaker is still supported and can be purchased here. Because the fies are so old you will need to convert them to Filemaker 11 and then again to the latest version.
Assuming the Filemaker database is actually setup as a relational database, then no it cannot be converted into Apple numbers. At least not without losing all the relational features.
The fact your friend hasn't updated the software in 20 years makes me think he is not very technical. Your best option is going to be hiring someone with good experience in Filemaker who can audit what you have and give some advice.
Jumping 8 versions of the software may prove to have a steep learning curve.
posted by Lanark at 4:16 PM on November 11, 2022 [2 favorites]
The biggest question is what do they want/need to do with the data? This will greatly influence the decision around what platform to migrate it to.
Without knowing much I would normally choose Postgres (powerful, widespread support, cross-platform, has features like fulltext indexing), but I am a developer and don't use desktop UIs to build interfaces to access and query data (unless it's a spreadsheet). But, it's a perfectly valid use case to want to use a form-building desktop database application, and it may be that the latest FileMaker Pro is still the best, or a good enough, option. So, I would sort that out first, and what needs to be done flows from that.
If a spreadsheet will suffice, then I would go with Excel and start migrating the data. I am not sure how the images play into things, but those can be saved with GUID names, and then just keep the GUID in the spreadsheet/database. That's how things are normally done these days.
posted by SNACKeR at 4:49 AM on November 12, 2022
Without knowing much I would normally choose Postgres (powerful, widespread support, cross-platform, has features like fulltext indexing), but I am a developer and don't use desktop UIs to build interfaces to access and query data (unless it's a spreadsheet). But, it's a perfectly valid use case to want to use a form-building desktop database application, and it may be that the latest FileMaker Pro is still the best, or a good enough, option. So, I would sort that out first, and what needs to be done flows from that.
If a spreadsheet will suffice, then I would go with Excel and start migrating the data. I am not sure how the images play into things, but those can be saved with GUID names, and then just keep the GUID in the spreadsheet/database. That's how things are normally done these days.
posted by SNACKeR at 4:49 AM on November 12, 2022
SQLite is probably the sensible file format IF there’s a front-end program that the user will be comfortable with. It looks like FileMaker doesn’t make that smooth; there is at least one free SQLite GUI but I’ve never used it.
posted by clew at 12:14 PM on November 12, 2022
posted by clew at 12:14 PM on November 12, 2022
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by smyles at 3:03 PM on November 11, 2022 [4 favorites]