This diagram outlines the two hosting options for FileMaker, along with the four client options, two of which are also the development environments. Both the FileMaker Pro Advanced and stripped-down IDEs have Windows and Mac versions, but again, there are no FileMaker Android apps. The two development environments, FileMaker Pro and FileMaker Pro Advanced, can also serve as desktop clients and hosts. The FileMaker Platform consists of development environments, on-prem and cloud servers, iOS apps, and web clients. FileMaker can establish two-way connections to some external SQL databases, but that won’t necessarily fix the scaling issue. That is contrary to the current spirit of cloud (and server) applications. It retains the same old file-based database format rather than adopting a real server database, which may limit its scalability. FileMaker Cloud offers an easier, more scalable, and more agile alternative to setting up your own FileMaker Server, albeit at a loss of some PHP and SQL connectivity capabilities. In 2017, cloud deployment is a huge deal. FileMaker has confirmed that it has no plans to create Android apps.

It’s not a big surprise that FileMaker only supports Android with web apps, but it is disappointing. is an Apple subsidiary, it is no surprise that the FileMaker Platform now has good support for iPads and iPhones with the FileMaker Go app. In 2017, desktop apps are more or less passé, and websites are losing ground to mobile apps.

In more recent years, those apps started moving to the web. Not so many years ago, departments tended to run FileMaker database applications on desktops.

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