[milhous]

i'm straddling the fence on either utilizing ms access with vba or using filemaker. here's what i need to do.

we have about a 100 or so lab supplies that we'd like to track. as a researcher pulls an item off the shelf for use, the item number will be inputed to the database by means of a barcode wand reader. the wand will then send a carriage return after the appropropriate barcode has been used and then 1 unit will be deducted from that item's available stock. don't worry about any aspects of the barcode system, it's just another means of entering data and it's just emulating a keyboard.

the filemaker demo seems fairly straightforward and seems easy enough to create the database with the various supplies and quantities.

but what i'm not sure of is whether or not you can create front-end forms for filemaker like ms access. I want the end user to see an interface to checking out supplies, not recordsets and such.

let me know what you guys think. thanks.

edit: and if you could suggest what version of filemaker i need, i'd appreciate that too.

[squilla]

I've been using FM 7 since it came out a few months ago, and it will let you create forms as pretty and as complex as you like, very easily. By all means, get version 7; it's much more powerful and easier to use than older versions.

[torifile]

I've been tinkering with FM7 for a few weeks and it seems that the answer to your question lies in using users with different layouts. For example, the end user would only be able to see the forms they need. In that layout you could lock all the fields you don't want them to mess with. The admin of the db, OTOH, would get access to other layouts that allow input. It's pretty easy to do.

As far as what version of FM you'd need, it depends on what you want. If you want multiple users to access the db from various locations, you'll need FM7 Server and FM7 clients for each computer. If there's just ONE computer with the db, all you need is one copy of FM7 - the ordinary one. BTW, how are you getting the barcode info into the db? I've been interested in learning about that.

[mitchell_pgh]

I've been tinkering around with FMP for a long time... 7 is the best to date!