Studio Manager: 4.6, 5 or 7?

We attended the FileMaker Developer's Conference a couple weeks ago and came back transformed. You would not believe the number of sessions they had at that thing! A day would go something like this: session 1: 8-9:15, session 2: 9:45-11, session 3: 11:15-12:30, lunch: 12:30 - 1, session 4: 1-2, session 5: 2-3:15, session 6: 3:45-5, session 7: some kind of multi-hour thing that included more information along with dinner.

There was so much information to talk about and share. I learned a lot. Met new people and renewed ties with many of my old friends.

The purpose of this post, though, is to tell you that we've come away from the conference convinced more than ever that we want to aim towards a single file solution for Studio Manager. And we are doing a lot of work on that single file version. All the 28 files we had are now 28 tables inside a single file called Studio-Manager.fp7.

The only problem is how much work it is. See my companion piece in FileMaker Fever telling you what's involved to get to a single file solution. It's much easier to just migrate your files to 7 and get them to work again - which we are well on our way towards accomplishing. We still hope to release Studio Manager 5 on October 1st.

If we burn rubber, we might have the first version of a single file solution done by Nov 1st. That would be a bit of a miracle but we've a got a big prospective customer who wants a 7-based Studio Manager asap and they want a single file solution.

I would say conservatively that FileMaker 7 is at least twice as powerful as FileMaker 6. Since it is so different from 6, it is going to take a year or two (we are 7 months in now) to learn most of its secrets. We expect both our multi-file Studio Manager 5 and our single-file Studio Manager 7 to be improvements over Studio Manager 4.6. Studio Manager 5 gets you to 7. Studio Manager 7 gets you to the simplicity of a single file. But even Studio Manager 7 won't be the last word on what's possible because FM7 is a big rich product with almost infinite possibilities.

We think our customers and prospective customers fall into five groups:

1. You are happily running Studio Manager on FileMaker 5-6 and will continue to do so for one to five more years before upgrading.


2. You've changed your copy of Studio Manager so extensively that you will want to upgrade to 7 yourself now or later rather than upgrade to Studio Manager 7 and then redo your changes.


3. You run a fairly vanilla version of Studio Manager and want the latest a greatest version. They might jump on Studio Manager 5 and then hop onto Studio Manager 7 asap.


4. You own FileMaker 5.5 or 6 and have enough licenses, that you aren't in a hurry to upgrade to 7 and pay the extra $150/seat. You'll want to buy Studio Manager 4.6 and upgrade in a year or two or three to a mature Studio Manager 7. Brand new software isn't compelling to you. You like tried and true better.


5. You already own FileMaker 7 and would like to purchase a version of Studio Manager that's compatible with your cool new software. Given the excitement surrounding 7, we think there are a lot of you out there in this group. It's one reason we are trying to get a 7-compatible version of Studio Manager out the door quickly.


6. You want to upgrade your copies of FileMaker soon and need to go all the way up to 7 to avoid paying for an upgrade to 6 and then 7 all over again. You are concerned about committing to 6 right now when FileMaker Inc. is saying they are stopping sales of FileMaker 6 on September 17th, 2004! Third parties will still be selling 6 for quite some time, by the way. And probably at substantial discounts.

   If you are set on going directly to 7 soon, we suggest that you get your feet wet and get Studio Manager 4.6 (or 5 when it is released) so you don't waste any time getting the huge benefits of Studio Manager.

   If you want to do lots of customizing, you should probably plan to upgrade to the single file version when it becomes available in November or December. You can get started soon on a smaller scale and then bump up to the single-file version and roll it out to the troops. We will be offering extremely favorable pricing for those who buy SM5 and then want to upgrade to SM7 soon after. It might be so favorable as to be free - we haven't made our minds up yet.

I am offering free advice to our customers and prospective customers on what's best for you. Don't hesitate to contact me by phone (415 388-8563) or email or enter a comment here. Also, we are dying to hear what you think about all this and what you want. Let us know.