I find FMP a very good place to start for historians who want to build their own relational database . It's easy to start with - deceivingly easy - and allows to move up to more complex and challenging applications. The fact that it runs on Mac and Windows definitely helps. However, it seems to me that there is very little attention to the fine art of relational database building in the education of historians, archeologists, genealogists, economic historians, which means that data is being collected in spreadsheets - which are even easier to start with but are bad at relational data.
Sorry to ask a somewhat off-topic question but I am curious how many historians - or developers working on applications for historians - are using FMP? Do you share the above assessment?
Do you know of any educational resources (books, websites, youtube channels, ...) about database development for historical research?
Great question!
I know of a number of FileMaker developers who started out as historians, archaeologists or similar (including myself), and there are certainly many users in the liberal arts, user groups at universities, etc.
Way back when I was doing this, I was just learning by doing and applying the analytical, scientific approach that is part of ones training.
I'd also be curious to hear about more elaborate resources in this area.