Is anyone here conversant in Filemake Pro, Microsoft Access, and maybe Bento?

[Stinky The Clown]

I am really just interested in sharing data between them on a one time basis. I want to enter data on an iPad, including at least one photograph per item, and then export that to Filemaker and then to Access, or maybe even direct to Access.

At the moment, I only need to know if this is possible. I can get into the how later.

Thanks!


(note, I am also cross posting this in the computer help forum. Hopefully this will not be seen as spam.)

[Tesha]

1. What tool will you use to enter a photograph into a record on the iPad?

Some thoughts just to get the conversation started:

Generally speaking, if the database schema is simple
enough, *ALL* databases can interchange tables in some
very basic forms such as "CSV" or "TSV" (Comma-separated-
values or Tab-separated-values). The images, though,
if they're really located in the records, would pro-
bably be stored as "Blobs" (Binary Large Objects) and
those may not move as easily. On the other hand, if
the images are stored in the records just as filenames
(that point to the real images located somewhere else
outside the record), then there's no problem.

Tesha

[Stinky The Clown]

2. Thanks for the conversation starter . . . .

. . . we need to do an inventory. Maybe as many as 1,000 items. There are probably 15-20 data fields, all pretty simple text strings: description, item number, inventory tag number, electrical demand, water usage, condition, that sort of thing. Our deliverable is to be in the 2007 version of Excel.

I have already tried and I can save the Bento file as an Excel file and it opens perfectly in Excel. No problem whatsoever. Easy as pie.

The wrinkle is that we also have to provide a picture of each item. Our thought is to take the picture on the iPad and store it in the Bento file. From there, we can send it to Filemaker (I assume) and thence to Excel.

In practice, a picture in Bento simply fails to translate. The rest of the data goes through just fine. It is the picture that's vexing. My hope was to convince the client to accept an MS Access database, but only if we can have the picture export from Bento or FM to Access.

If not, we're stuck with simply linking the file in a cell in Excel.

Does all that make sense?

[Tesha]

3. Well, reading the Bento documentation wasn't helpful ;-)

They really don't seem to talk about what gets
exported when you've included "media" in a field
in a row.

What did your experiment reveal? When you do an
export to (say) TSV, what shows up in the column
(field) that should contain the image? A file path?
I could also imagine that you might see the actual
photo turn up as MIME-encoded data/Base64, or some
other binary-as-printable text representation.

You could probably always glue things together
with Perl/PHP/Python.

Tesha

[Stinky The Clown]

4. Thanks for the thoughts.

I broke down and bought some One to One time from Apple. I have an appointment to go in on Friday.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

5. I use filemaker pro all the time, and Bento

Put it strikes me that you might find some relief in DEVONthink Pro. You might even try TrialPad, even though no legal work is involved.

Both have nice ways to share PDFs, photos, images, everything.

[Stinky The Clown]

6. Thanks for the suggestions . . . .

That Devon Pro stuff looks interesting - particularly their scanning solutions for organizing "paper" so it can later be found.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

7. Devon is so effing capable, that I am still trying

to figure out how to use it best. The more I use it, the more I like it.

TrialPad is one great organizer. Even though lawyers designed it for trial, it is logical, easy to use, and makes it a snap to display stuff in a really organized manner.
Bento's cool, but Filemaker is like HAL9000 compared to an IBM360.

[Stinky The Clown]

8. Actually, we us Filemaker for a lot of stuff. Just not on the iPad.

In fact, we use Filemaker for several things that are as fundamental to our business as paint is to a painting contractor. We started with FM3.

What do you use for a scanner with that Devon?

[ChairmanAgnostic]

9. brother

9(somethingsomethingsomething) multiprinter/fax/scanner.

good machine. Reliable, ink costs are low, can handle weird shit I give it.

[Stinky The Clown]

10. Ha! You answered another question I had

I have a Savin 9016. Way more horsepower than I ever needed, and it is only black and white. The only advantage is that it prints, scans, and faxes 11x17. Since we now deliver virtually 100% of our work electronically, we have no need for the 11x17. I want to replace it with a lower duty, smaller, cheaper, color all in one. The Brother 9970 or maybe even the 9560.

The Savin is a 10,000 (12,000?) copy per month machine. Mine has less than 6,500 total copies and its 5 years old!