DBs to the Rescue
Written on June 4, 2009 by Katherine W. Prawl
As mentioned in an earlier post, I’ll be starting graduate school next week. It’s been awhile (a long while!) since I’ve indulged in formal education, so I’m a little nervous about being able to keep up. So, as I habitually do, I’m looking to technology for help.
College study is essentially an exercise in knowledge management, and one of the tools of the KM trade is the ubiquitous database. Now it just so happens that in the past few weeks one of the companies who make a DB system I’ve used for over a decade, FileMaker Pro, have released an iPhone app that syncs with their consumer-grade product, Bento. I’ll be honest and say that when I’d tried out the 1.0 version of Bento about a year ago I was unimpressed. I saw no reason to buy it since I already had FMPro (albeit an obsolete version), and could use it for whatever I wanted to do, thank you very much. But ah! To sync with my iPhone! That’s a different story!
So, first I bought the iPhone app (for $4.99, a real steal for a DBMS), and it was pretty cool, but I quickly bumped up against the limitations of a handheld device’s small screen and limited input capabilities. Then, remembering my earlier lack of enthusiasm for Bento 1.0, I thought I’d see if it was feasible to design and export my databases in FileMaker Pro. It is, sort of, but looks pretty cumbersome, and besides that, the version that I have (6.0) is so old it’s not even eligible for an upgrade, and lacks the tools required to export in the required format easily. I’d have to buy the latest version for either $299 or $499, depending on which flavor I chose. Bento 2.0, at $49, began to look a lot more attractive.
You guessed it. I caved. And I’m not sorry. Here’s one result:
Bento is pretty! The folks at FileMaker have put considerable effort into making form design painless. So, while this system lacks many of the more powerful bells-and-whistles of the pro software, including the ability to publish standalone versions of databases one builds with it, for personal use or within a small enterprise (where everyone can have a licensed copy of the enabling software) it is very impressive. And putting together good-looking and useful database apps quickly, then syncing them to my iPhone to carry with me wherever I go is fast, too. In just one day I’ve built and started using four databases that will help me stay on top of things in grad school, and I’ll be making more for other purposes as well, you can be sure.
If you look closely in the left column of the screenshot of my “Writing Assignments” database, you’ll see icons for several others, including “Classes”, “Reading Assignments”, and “Discussion Board Topics”. In addition to having the shells of these apps, thanks to instructor soon-to-be-Dr. Jeremy Littau’s superbly organized and early-delivered syllabus, I’ve already entered 27 reading assignments, 12 writing assignments and 26 discussion topic records in their respective “boxes” (/bento/ is Japanese for /box/), and within the same 24 hours have finished some of the readings and made notes about them in the appropriate records’ fields. I’m feeling much more confident now that I’ll be able to keep up with what I assume will be classrooms full of people a generation or two younger than me. Wish me luck!
If you enjoyed this post Subscribe to our feed
