Lots of people use spreadsheets and have a certain comfort level with them. Spreadsheets are great for adding up columns of figures, making charts, and they're really good for ... well, not much else! Spreadsheets are even losing their ground with charting. See the sidebar, " Charting in FileMaker Pro," for a look at some of your options for charting.

Charting in FileMaker Pro

The great advantage that spreadsheets used to have over FileMaker Pro was the ability to chart data. This is no longer true. Charting is now an easy task in FileMaker Pro thanks to the FileMaker Web Viewer Example Database as well as some third-party plug-ins. The FileMaker Web Viewer Charting Example Database lets you combine FileMaker Pro data with dynamic Flash HTML charts to add interesting graphical elements to your solutions. Using the Web Viewer, this tool lets you add 3D pie and bar charts, line charts, scatter charts, and Gantt charts to your FileMaker Pro 9 and 8.5 solutions. The download file that accompanies this article includes HTML and SWF files you need to display the Flash HTML charts. You'll also need to download the Adobe Flash Player from the Adobe Web site to view the charts.

The FusionReactor plug-in uses FileMaker Pro's Web Viewer capability (in versions 9 and 8.5) and Flash to generate dynamic charts that instantly display and/or update as you enter data.

Also, ICE from iSolutions Inc. is a hosted graphing solution that uses the new Web Viewer feature of FileMaker Pro 9/8.5, plus Adobe Flash technology, to provide graphing in your FileMaker Pro layouts. ICE may not be appropriate for the rank amateur, but if you have a good grasp of text calculations, you can quickly get a handle on ICE and start making beautiful graphs.