I'd point to the ability to send SMTP mail without a separate e-mail client as a desirable new feature, although this might be more a case of fixing something that was broken. (FileMaker used to send messages into your mail client's inbox to be mailed, which isn't exactly an efficient design.) The same logic applies to the improved support for external SQL sources; if FileMaker 10 didn't support the current versions of Oracle, SQL Server, and MySQL, we'd think it was unsuitable for use in an enterprise. Fortunately, it can query and display data from all of these sources.

Should you upgrade from FileMaker 9? The short answer: yes!

Able alternatives

FileMaker has little competition on the Mac, and essentially no competitors that work on both Mac OS X and Windows. It does, however, have two competitors on Windows: Microsoft Access and Alpha Five.

Nearly everybody already has , usually as part of Microsoft Office. It's harder to develop for Access than for FileMaker, and it currently has no Web capabilities unless a programmer ties it to a Web site, typically with ASP.Net. On the other hand, Access looks like the rest of Office, and it has powerful programming capabilities and a wizard that lets you upsize to SQL Server very easily. (It's quite complicated to upsize from FileMaker to a SQL database.) If your shop already uses Access and is happy with the results, then FileMaker would become appealing only if you needed to support Macs or take your database to the Web without programming.