Trivia Question: What do FileMaker and the rock group Kiss have in common?

Answer: The amount of abuse I've taken over the years for being a raving fan of both.

Today, FileMaker released FileMaker 9. This release is probably one of the biggest releases FileMaker has done since Release 5. I use both FileMaker Pro and FileMaker Server Advanced. One of the major improvements in the server release is the integration capabilities with Oracle, MySQL, and SQL Server. The server also implements server side scripting which will give it some pretty powerful DTS capabilities. Server also allows you to build relational data models using FileMaker's modeling tool. Once the database is modeled, you're ready to go. You can modify the schema and add fields to it. However, these fields are not injected into the SQL database. FileMaker will store the data in its file repository. This will be useful for building you're own functions. If you haven't used FileMaker's custom function capabilities; they're very powerful and easy to develop.

I'm excited about this release and there will be more posts coming soon. I've got big things planned.