FileMaker Pro 3.0

FileMaker Pro 3.0 is the December 1995 release of Claris’s desktop database that made FileMaker relational. FileMaker had long been the best-known “database for the rest of us” on the Macintosh. Until 3.0 it was essentially a flat-file program: each file held one table, and the only link between files was a lookup that copied values across. Version 3.0 let one file display, edit and script records in another through named relationships. It also added portals, scrollable lists of related records placed on a layout, and a much larger ScriptMaker command set. The ScriptMaker-and-calculation model it established lasted, with growing vocabularies, until FileMaker Pro 7 rebuilt the architecture in 2004.

FileMaker is not a programming language in the textbook sense. Most FileMaker “code” is assembled by picking steps and functions from dialog boxes, not by typing source text. Even so, FileMaker Pro 3.0 contained two real little languages that a generation of small-business developers wrote applications in: a step-based procedural script language, and an expression language for calculation fields.

History and Origins

FileMaker began at Nashoba Systems in Concord, Massachusetts. Nashoba’s MS-DOS database Nutshell was sold by Leading Edge. When the Macintosh arrived, Nashoba paired the same data engine with a forms-based graphical interface. Leading Edge wanted to remain a DOS-only vendor, so the Mac product needed a new name and a new publisher. FileMaker shipped through Forethought Inc. in April 1985. In 1988 Claris, the software company Apple Computer had formed, bought Nashoba, and the product became FileMaker II. FileMaker Pro followed in 1990.

FileMaker Pro 2.0 (1992) put the product on Windows as well as the Mac. It also introduced ScriptMaker, which let users build scripts by choosing steps from a list and setting their options. Before that, users had relied mostly on FileMaker “remembering” actions they had just performed. TidBITS called ScriptMaker the feature that alone justified the 2.0 upgrade.

Claris reportedly made its relational plans public during 1995. On 1 November 1995, a Claris press release about a Newton companion product said FileMaker Pro 3.0 for Macintosh was “scheduled to ship with easy-to-use relational capabilities next month”. The program shipped in December 1995. The U.S. 3.0v1 build preserved by the Macintosh Garden archive is labelled 12/6/95, and FileMaker developers since then have given December 1995 as the release date. The Mac version was Power Macintosh native. Claris’s retail packaging, as recorded by the Centre for Computing History, lists System 7.1 or newer and 8 MB of RAM.

A 32-bit Windows version for Windows 95 and Windows NT was available by early 1996; archived 3.0v1 install media covers both platforms. It did not run on Windows 3.1 at first, which TidBITS called “the biggest mistake Claris made with this release”. By May 1996 Claris shipped a Windows build that ran on Windows 3.1 and Windows for Workgroups 3.11 through Win32s. Its README listed a few gaps: no QuickTime, and no TCP/IP on plain Windows 3.1.

By the mid-1990s, apart from ClarisWorks, FileMaker Pro was reportedly the only strong performer in Claris’s product line. In 1998 Apple folded most of Claris’s other products and renamed the company FileMaker, Inc. FileMaker Pro 3.0 and its successor FileMaker Pro 4.0 (September 1997) were both Claris products; 4.0 was the last major version before the rename.

Design Philosophy

FileMaker’s founding idea, as Nashoba co-founder Spec Bowers recalled it, was that a database should not freeze its design the moment data is entered. Fields could be added or removed at any time, text fields were variable-length, and the same data could be shown through many different layouts. Version 3.0 kept that philosophy while adding relational power, and reviewers noticed the restraint. Macworld observed that 3.0 defined table links in “a spartan dialog box rather than the fancy graphical mapping found in competing packages”. The same review described the product as aimed at the “growing mid range of Mac database users”: neither simple list-keepers nor users who needed Oracle-class systems.

The trade-off was explicit. The same Macworld review said FileMaker’s programming capabilities were “limited compared with those in competitors” such as 4th Dimension, Omnis 7 and FoxPro, and that it lacked “a proper debugger”. FileMaker Pro 3.0 chose approachability over programmability.

Key Features

Relationships and portals

A FileMaker Pro 3.0 relationship joins a match field in the current file to a match field in another file. It supports both one-to-one and one-to-many links, according to Macworld. Each table was still a separate file. Multiple tables per file arrived only with FileMaker Pro 7 in 2004, which is why later developers spent years consolidating multi-file “.fp3” and “.fp5” solutions.

Once a relationship exists, related fields can be placed directly on a layout. A portal displays many related records at once, for example every line item of an invoice inside the invoice record. Related records can be created through the portal. The Windows README noted that a related record no longer needed a pre-filled match value if the related file’s match field auto-entered a serial number.

ScriptMaker

Scripts are ordered lists of script steps, each with options set in dialogs instead of typed arguments. They can be attached to buttons on layouts, run from the Scripts menu, or called from other scripts. Version 3.0 expanded the step set considerably. Steps tied to the new features included deleting the current portal row, sending mail, spell-checking control, and steps that work with related records. Developers have long relied on the pattern of filling a global field with a list of keys and then using Go to Related Record, a technique the FileMaker writer Kevin Frank says has worked “since FileMaker Pro 3 was released in December 1995”. On the Macintosh, 3.0 could also embed AppleScript in scripts.

A ScriptMaker script is displayed as a list of steps. The example below is illustrative. Step names follow FileMaker conventions of the period, but the exact option text shown in the 1995 dialogs has not been verified:

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Go to Layout ["Invoice Entry"]
Go to Related Record ["Line Items"]
Delete Portal Row

Calculations and Status functions

Calculation fields hold formulas built from field references, operators and built-in functions. Related values are referenced by relationship name. Version 3.0 added Status functions that report the state of the running program, including Status(CurrentDate). TidBITS recommended it as a replacement for Today: in large files, Today recalculated every record whenever a file was opened on a new date.

An illustrative calculation in the style of the period, using a relationship called Line Items:

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If(Status(CurrentDate) > Due Date and Sum(Line Items::Amount) > 0,
   "Overdue", "")

Other 3.0 changes

• Optional indexing. Fields were indexed on first use in a find or sort, not automatically.
• Container references. Graphics could be stored as references to external files. One TidBITS reviewer cut a 60 MB image catalog to under 16 MB this way.
• Networking. TCP/IP and IPX/SPX support. On Windows, 3.0 dropped the NetBIOS and AppleTalk (PhoneNET PC) support of FileMaker Pro 2.x.
• Performance. TidBITS reported startup, sorting, searching and screen redraws as “noticeably faster” than 2.x on 68k hardware (a PowerBook 520c, SE/30 and Quadra 610). The reviewer passed on, as hearsay, that the program had been rewritten from the ground up. No benchmark figures were published.
• File format. 3.0 introduced the .fp3 format. Opening a 2.x file made a backup and converted it automatically.

Evolution

FileMaker Pro 3.0 received several maintenance updates. TidBITS reported a 3.0v2 updater in February 1996, and archives preserve updaters as late as 3.0v5. A separate FileMaker Pro Server 3.0 product followed, reportedly in January 1996.

FileMaker Pro 4.0 (September 1997) added a plug-in architecture and the Web Companion. Its CDML web publishing grew out of Claris’s licence of Blue World’s Lasso, which had first been built for FileMaker Pro 3.x. FileMaker Pro 5 (1999) introduced the .fp5 format. The relational model of 3.0 lasted until FileMaker Pro 7 (2004) replaced it with multiple tables per file, a graphical relationships graph and the .fp7 format. Modern FileMaker cannot open .fp3 files directly; they must first be converted to .fp7 with an intermediate version and then to .fmp12.

Current Relevance

FileMaker Pro 3.0 is historical software. Its files survive in archives, and the open-source fmptools project can read the fp3/fp5 file family and export the data to Excel, JSON or SQLite. Disk images of the Mac and Windows releases are preserved by retro-computing archives, and the Mac version can reportedly be run in classic Mac OS emulators such as SheepShaver and Basilisk II. The product line continues as Claris FileMaker. FileMaker, Inc. took back the Claris name (as Claris International Inc.) in August 2019, but its scripting and calculation languages have since been rebuilt and greatly extended.

Why It Matters

FileMaker Pro 3.0 brought relational design to an audience that had never written SQL and never intended to. Teachers, small-business owners, librarians and in-house “accidental developers” could now link customers to invoices, or students to classes, by drawing a portal on a layout and choosing a relationship from a list. The step-based script language and the formula language it shipped with were modest by programming-language standards. They were also the first programming many of its users ever did, and the multi-file .fp3 solutions they built ran businesses for years. The cost of later consolidating and converting those files shows how far version 3.0 had spread.