Feature | Alpha Five® Version 8 | FileMaker® Version 8 |
Web Publishing | Yes - Web Component Builder lets anyone build web database applications without having to program. | Yes - Pages appear to be FileMaker forms. |
Web Server | Application Server provides access to any number of databases, any number of users. | An additional product priced at $999. |
Scalable web server solutions with failover | Yes | No |
User, group, and object level security | Yes | Yes |
Optionally, use Windows authentication of users | Yes | No - Requires upgrade. |
Integration with ADO and ODBC databases | Yes | No - Requires upgrade. |
Action scripting (approximately 200 actions) that enables you to easily and rapidly build fully featured applications without programming. | Yes | Limited |
Does the software have a full-featured programming language to provide ultimate flexibility? | Yes | No |
Includes a multi-pane script editor. | Yes | No |
Includes over 2,000 extensible functions and methods with auto complete technology, a profiler and a debugger. | Yes | No |
Includes powerful and flexible tools speeding up data entry and trapping errors on data entry | Yes | Limited |
Offers high levels of flexibility in implementing lookups (including conditional lookups and cascading lookups). | Yes | No |
Includes 'double entry field rules' so that, for example, you can require that credit card numbers be entered twice for accuracy on large orders | Yes | No |
Automatic posting rules so that, for example you can automatically deplete inventory when items are ordered | Yes | No |
Allows you to look up data from different tables depending on the value in a field. An example of this would be looking up different pricing tables for government, corporate and educational customers | Yes | No |
Includes a rich array of capitalization rules so that data can be entered in any case but will display correctly capitalized | Yes | Limited |
Automate unattended, scheduled backups. | Yes | Requires upgrade. |
Remote database administration. | Yes | Requires upgrade. |
Includes a powerful and flexible report writer | Yes | Yes |
Uses industry standard data format (.dbf) | Yes | Proprietary format |
Has options and controls for displaying data. For example can you selectively hide information that staff shouldn't see but management should. | Yes | No |
Includes full email and email merge capability. | Yes | Yes |
Data encryption | Yes | No - Requires upgrade. |
Run scripts from menus | Yes | No - Requires upgrade. |
Menu customization, custom tooltips, custom right-click context menus | Yes | No - Requires upgrade. |
Is data 'entwined' into an application or can it be easily manipulated and accessed without having to go through the application. | Data easily accessed. | Data tightly tied to application. |
Developer runtime | Multi user with network optimization | Single User |
Popup calendars, calculators, SMTP mail, menu controls | Included | Relies on 3rd party separately priced add-ons. |
Relative cost | Lower | Higher |
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