FileMaker and the iPhone:
Best Friends

You've got the best corporate database; you've got the best mobile device. Now it's time to get them working together.

I wrote the first major article about optimized iPhone development in FileMaker Advisor magazine, in the January 2008 issue. That article is available over the web, read it here.

An application truly optimized for the iPhone needs to be:

• Fully Web 2.0 Compliant — It responds quickly, never wait for a page to reload
• Optimized for iPhone Display — Perfect marriage of hardware and software, no scrolling or zooming needed
• Looks and Acts Like a Native iPhone App — but it isn't; it's accessing your FileMaker Server via the cell network (EDGE) or Wi-Fi, which a native app can't do

Sure, you can open up FileMaker's PHP Site Assistant, or use any of a variety of tools out there to make a web site that accesses FileMaker (even some that claim to be iPhone friendly), but it won't meet any of the above goals: Most notably, you'll spend a lot of time waiting for every page to load every time you click something when using a slow cell network connection. Top quality iPhone web applications demand highly precise custom development; there's no way to shortcut that.

Q: Does this use Apple's iPhone SDK?
A: No, it does not use the native application SDK. Such an app would be unable to communicate to your FileMaker Server over the cell network. This is a web application, using Web 2.0 technologies (CSS and AJAX) and Apple's iPhone SDK for Web Developers, which is a different SDK that's more appropriate for our purpose.

Interested?
Go to my contact page to take the next step.