I suspect that this matter has received some prior comment in this forum. FileMaker is a database program, and always has been, with the grace and appearance that the supporting System allows. I first used it when it was but FileMaker (unqualified), running on a Plus and an SE under 6.0.7. When those new-fangled HDDs arrived it made storage of the 'base as a single file a great deal easier, and also gave a user fewer heart-in-mouth experiences occasioned by FDD misalignments between machines. I still use FileMaker, but nothing newer than Pro 6 under 10.4.11, despite almost weekly inducements from fm inc. to upgrade/update/leap into space. My largest DB is a 25,000+ recorded music (as opposed to disc) catalogue, with attached lookups for shelf numbers, composers, ensemble memberships, and whatever else that I may need for FileMaker to print a ready-to-use programme running-sheet for broadcast or print publication. It also copes with running-sheets for concert and studio recordings that I have made and edited, and their integration into the main catalogue, as necessary.

By contrast, in almost every imaginable way, and probably in ways that I hope never to meet, Access is an obscene realization of its parent company's beliefs about how stupid computer users should be marshalled in thought—and impeded in 'access' (a sour joke) to their data—in a data-burying program that was crafted to compel their utter subservience. Access is utterly intransigent against any significant searching or remarshalling of data.

de