FileMaker was marketed by a different company, Forethought, which was acquired by Microsoft a few years later. The rights to market FileMaker reverted to Nahsoba Systems for a time, and Nashoba marketed the next version, known as FileMaker 4, themselves, around 1988. Shortly after that, Apple Computer formed Claris, a wholly owned subsidiary to market software. Within months, Nashoba sold FileMaker to Claris. By that time, Leading Edge and Nutshell faded from the marketplace because of competition from other DOS and later Windows platform database products, whereas, in spite of competition from Microsoft File, FileMaker continued to succeed on the Macintosh platform.

Claris changed the name to FileMaker II in order to be compatible with the naming of their other products, such as MacWrite II, but the product was changed little from the last Nashoba version. A slew of randomly-numbered minor versions followed, when things finally settled down with the release of FileMaker Pro version 1.0 in 1990. At this point, FileMaker was still a MacOS-only application.

A significant move - an important one in FileMaker's history came with the development of a seamlessly cross-platform Windows and Macintosh version. This gave it a very strong position in the marketplace and has continued to be one of its key advantages. Version 3.0, which followed, was a significant upgrade with new relational and scripting features.

By 1995 FileMaker was the only product in Claris' lineup that had continued strong sales, other classics like MacWrite and Resolve (a re-labeled Informix WingZ) had been milked for many years before being updated far too late to have any impact in the market. Eventually Apple dissolved Claris, abandoned many products, moved a few under the Apple brand ("Appleworks") and created "FileMaker, Inc." to further develop and market FileMaker and clarify its position in the market.

Since its emergence from the Apple 'fold', FileMaker Inc. has strengthened its position and has invested substantially in the development effort required to deliver a considerably richer and more powerful edition of FileMaker. Version 7 of FileMaker Pro, released in March 2004, was the first time this radically new rebuild of FileMaker became publicly available. The new version offers increased flexibility, supporting file sizes of up to 8 terabytes (up from 2Gb in previous versions), individula fields can hold up to 2Gb (up from 64k in previous versions) and FileMaker's relational model has been enriched, offering multiple tables per file and a graphical relationship editor which displays (and allows manipulation of) related tables in a form which in some respects resembles the familiar 'entity-relationship diagram' format.

Description

Key to the FileMaker system is the database engine being tied tightly to the forms (screen, layouts, reports etc) used to access it. Most database systems separate these tasks, or to be more accurate, ignore access entirely, concerning themselves primarily with organization and storage of the data. Until recently, each table of a FileMaker database system was stored as a separate file (with relational links to other files) and each file had its own in-built interface capabilities. This model is still possible in the latest version (version 7) but now it's also possible to build multiple tables into one document. Either way, the system overall is highly flexible, making it easy to develop quickly and to make changes on the fly as the data structure is altered - however it does carry some drawbacks in the design and support of very complex relational solutions.

For the novice user, for instance, it is possible to create an address book application simply by dragging fields into a form. The database engine adds fields to the datastore on the fly as the user adds fields. More advanced users and developers will find that powerful calculation and scripting options are available, all controlled from a high level point-and-click interface.

FileMaker also provides an interface (API) for integration of third-party tools, making it highly extensible. In addition there are a variety of web publishing options suited to both low-end and larger scale project requirements.

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