FileMaker's Bento: A First Look

FileMaker is introducing Bento, the "new personal database that's as easy to use as a Mac", and making it available as a free "Preview" version.

A Bento box is a compartmentalized Japanese container that allows you to fit everything neatly into place. Similarly, Bento for Mac, much like its icon, is said to do the same for your contacts and calendars, projects and events, and "just about every type of information you have".

Let's open up the lid and take a look.

What's included...

Bento has direct links to the Mac OS X Address Book and iCal, various ready-to-use templates, and currently about twenty or so themes. Each set of records is a "collection", and you can store multiple collections in a "library". They've also include "Smart" collections, which are fundamentally just predefined searches.

Adding new forms to get new views of your data is a snap, and it allows you to easily drag and drop fields or rearrange things in order to see information in a way that makes sense to you. You can customize fonts, fields, colors, columns, shading and more, but it's usually simpler just to let Bento handle the formatting for you.

In addition to form views there's also a table view, but that's less configurable, and it appears to suffer from the dreaded "there can be only one" syndrome. Apparently if you want multiple list views of your data you're supposed to use forms.

Bento's printing abilities seem to be limited to printing the table view, or printing form views. There's no reporting to speak of, and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want to try doing envelopes or labels from your data.

What's missing...

Other than a few basic summary functions, there are no calculated fields, and there's definitely, absolutely, positively no scripting. I guess as "easy to use as a Mac" means that we have the IQ of a toaster and can't be trusted with sharp pointy objects.

In some ways, the ease in creating forms and laying out fields reminds me quite a bit of the late, lamented HyperCard. That said, HyperCard had HyperTalk hiding in the wings, which allowed us mere Mac users who needed something more than pretty forms and text fields to create some pretty sophisticated applications.

No word on what the upgrade path looks like, or if your Bento collections and data can be sucked into FileMaker when —not if—you need more power.

[REVISED: Apparently Bento has a "calculated" field that understands the four basic math operators plus string concatenation: be still my heart.]

Conclusion...

It appears that FileMaker was deathly afraid of cannibalizing sales of their FileMaker Pro database, and as such Bento's feature set was deliberately simplified to the point where only a very few will find it suitable to their needs. Unfortunately, FileMaker has yet to learn the lesson that it's better to take sales away from yourself than leave the door open for someone else to do so.

But to be fair, it should be repeated that this is a PREVIEW version of Bento, and it's entirely possible that FileMaker may correct some or all of these issues prior to actually shipping the product.

See for yourself...

If you'd like to try it out for yourself, visit the Bento Trial website.

Note, however, that the fine print on the download page says that FileMaker cannot guarantee that data entered into the preview version will be accessible by the final shipping version. So feel free to play, but don't use it for anything important quite yet.

When it ships the single-user version will cost $50, and a five-user family pack will go for $100.

Comments

[ER]

You're right Michael. HyperCard suffered initially from the same basic flaw. It was easy to get information INTO the system, but next to impossible to get it back out again in a useful form.

[George]

There is a field type that is called Calculation Field... I used it last night to do FullName = FirstName + " " + LastName....

[Michael Long]

Thanks George, that's why it's a first look!

[Rob...]

Are there any alternatives in the same sort of price range with more power/flexibility?

Regards,

Rob...

[George]

"there's definitely, absolutely, positively no scripting"

Applescript is implemented.

[Michael Long]

George, there's no scripting tied to events and accessible from inside the program. Even a HTML window lets me tie a bit of JavaScript to a button that's fired when the button is clicked.

Again, think HyperTalk and HyperCard.