Panorama V Macworld Review (April 2005)
Many Panorama users have
expressed dismay at the review of Panorama V in the April
2005 issue of Macworld (page 37). In our view, and the view
of many Panorama users, this review contains many
significant ommissions, contradictions and outright errors.
In fact, this review even neglects to mention that Panorama
is RAM based instead of disk based.
How
did this happen? The review was written by someone with a
strong conflict of interest, a FileMaker developer named
William Porter. The printed Macworld review doesn't mention
his background but a google search for william
porter filemaker produces hundreds of pages and
reveals that Mr. Porter has a strong financial interest in
the success of FileMaker through his product development,
consulting, authoring (he has written a FileMaker book) and
speaking engagements at FileMaker conferences. After
meeting with Macworld's editors they now agree that Mr.
Porter's background should have been disclosed in the
article, but we believe that someone with a financial stake
in a competitive product should never have been asked to
write a review in the first place.
Macworld received a large number of letters from readers
that were troubled by this review. Many of these readers
sent copies of their letters to us also, and we have
included a representative sample of these letters below.
Update: So far no response or letters have been printed in
the magazine itself, but Macworld's editor's blog now
contains a response entitled "Honesty is
the Best Policy". Unfortunately the editorial
makes clear that Macworld still does not agree that a
significant financial stake in a competitive product should
disqualify someone for writing a review for their
publication, in fact it is now their official policy that
it does not.
Your review of Panorama in the April MacWorld should have been written by someone who knows both FileMaker and Panorama. I would like to respond to your review of Panorama in the April edition of MacWorld with the following:
As a database developer who has worked with FileMaker, Excel, 4D and Panorama since version 1 of each product (I was also one of the original FileMaker Solutions Alliance members and I am still a card carrying member) I believe your review of Panorama V is somewhat skewed. It has been my profession for the last 15 years to create custom databases which convert manual paper driven processes to computer equivalents in a seamless manner which causes the least amount of confusion and stress to the users of the program. I have chosen Panorama as my development tool in most cases for the following reasons:
1. Panorama is RAM based which makes it up to 100 times faster than competing products for most regularly used tasks such as finding, selecting, sorting, summarizing, etc.
2. Panorama has always had the ability to hide the complicated stuff from users by giving the developer the ability to create custom menus and data entry forms that can be changed on the fly in a way other programs can not. Ease of use and “user proof” forms have always been a very important client requirement.
3. Through the use of text funnels and/or arrays, no other database can manipulate data as easily or as fast as Panorama.
4. Panorama has a full programming language that utilizes true memory variables and over 1000 functions and statements.
5. Panorama is rock solid and the files rarely need to be rebuilt or recovered if the computer is improperly shutdown.
In short, over 70 clients from one man shops to Fortune 500 companies have turned to Panorama to run entire businesses and/or solve departmental problems that no other database program they researched could begin to address. My company once completed a project for a major insurance carrier in three months that Oracle programmers had been trying to create for over a year.
It is not my intent to besmirch FileMaker or any other development tool, however, when William Porter says that Panorama is suitable for “only moderately complicated relational databases”, I beg to differ.
Jeff Kozuch
President, Acacia Systems
Apple Certified Technical Coordinator
Certified Member, Apple Consultants
Network
Regarding the recent review of ProVUE's Panorama V in the
April MacWorld, I take issue with some of the reviewer's
points and evaluation of the product. William Porter says
"If you're developing even moderately complex databases...
Panorama can't compete with Filemaker Pro 7." As a Panorama
developer and someone who has authored many complex
databases as well as a commercial product, Text Cleaner
(www.textcleaner.com), I feel the statement is off the
mark. I couldn't develop these products with Filemaker's
restrictive scripting and interface inflexibility and
wouldn't attempt to do so, even though I have also
developed Filemaker databases. The review states that
Panorama is not as easy to learn as Filemaker, which would
go without saying for a product with an extensive
programming language. Mr. Porter goes over extremely basic
features of Panorama that have existed since the 80's as
well saying that the elastic forms feature is a new one,
even though it has existed for years.
Glenn Kowalski
MacLab
Takoma, MD
Let me start by saying that I am a Panorama developer. That
disclosure is important so that you understand that I have
a vested interest. Macworld did not disclose that William
Porter, the writer of your review, is a FileMaker developer
with a vested interest in FileMaker. That's unfair to your
readers and to Panorama. I make my living building database
applications. FileMaker certainly has advantages in some
respects, but overall I have repeatedly concluded that
Panorama is the more powerful of the two for my uses.
Knowing Panorama as I do, Mr. Porter's review did not
strike me as being written by someone who had really
explored its capabilities. If he was seeking FileMaker's
way of doing things within Panorama, he wouldn't find it.
They are different products and neither is suitable for
every database use.
James Cook
Hindsight Ltd., CO
My company sells a professional database package that I
developed in Panorama. It's designed for scientists who
maintain colonies of genetically engineered mice, to allow
them to track the effect of these genes as they are passed
from generation to generation. By all accounts this is a
professional application well suited to a complex task; we
have customers in virtually every major academic
institution throughout North America and Europe.
I
didn't start out as a programmer. In fact I had had no
programming experience at all when I found myself, as a
postdoctoral research scientist, faced with the task of
tracking my mouse colony. There were a number of homemade
FileMaker Pro and Excel solutions floating around, but none
was sophisticated enough to deal with the complexity of the
genetic and other data I needed to track. I came across
Panorama and decided to give it a try.
And,
without trying to sound excessively dramatic, my life
changed. Beginning with a simple database, I learned by
doing. At its simplest, Panorama can be used as a
spreadsheet program (albeit a very good one). As you
progress, you can begin to write simple scripts to automate
some processes. You can then begin to take advantage of
Panorama's many tools for designing and building user
interfaces. As you become more familiar with Panorama's
extensive programming tools your database starts to look
like a real application.
This
is what happened to me. I started having fun as soon as I
began using Panorama. I learned and got better. Along the
way I never felt that there was something I wanted to do
but couldn't: in Panorama there's always a way to do
something, and usually more than one.
So
six years ago I decided to leave my research job to develop
and market scientific database applications full time. I've
never regretted basing this career on Panorama.
This
letter is in response to your recent review in which
Panorama is compared unfavorably to FileMaker Pro and even
Excel (!). The reviewer stated that Panorama was unsuited
for developing anything in excess of simple database
applications. I believe my experience shows the reality to
be entirely to the contrary..”
Rob Cambell
Big Bench Software, Vancouver BC
I have just finished reading the review of Panorama from
proVUE Development in the current April issue. I was struck
by the apparent FileMaker Pro bias constantly expressed by
the reviewer. I can't recall ever reading a more slanted
review of a product and decided to research Mr. Porter the
reviewer to see if I could garner some insight as to his
one sided perspective. It turns out that Mr. Porter is a
prominent FileMaker author and has anchored his business to
providing database solutions based on FileMaker as well. I
find this very disturbing to have someone with a
predisposed bias reviewing a competitive product under the
guise of impartiality. This would be exactly the same as
Motor Trend magazine having the author of "Ford's For All
Occasions" who also owns a Ford dealership doing a review
of the new Chevrolet. It might make for interesting reading
but would hardly be expected to be objective and unbiased.
This is exactly what your review of Panorama has
demonstrated as well.
Even if Mr. Porter may have made an effort to be fair, his
obvious dedication to his native database program
overshadows all his opinions in this review. I know that I,
being a long time and dedicated Panorama user and
developer, would be the last person to assign to review
FileMaker for other uninformed parties looking to make a
database program purchasing decision. Mr. Porter first
tells us point blank that Panorama is not for moderately
complex database users or for client-server users (even
though this version is not marketed for this use) and then
later is sure to also mention that even if your needs are
simple Panorama is not as good as FileMaker. I have never
used FileMaker myself so I can't honestly compare the two
but I have had enough exposure to others in the Panorama
community to know that 75% of what I do in Panorama I could
never have done with FileMaker. Mr. Porter glosses over the
Panorama programming language which is so much more
powerful than anything FileMaker has that it would be
utterly ridiculous to compare the two at all. He further
mentions what he considers to be a new feature (the elastic
forms) but is so uninformed about Panorama that he missed
completely that this has been around for years. Along these
lines, he could have at least mentioned that, unlike
FileMaker, Panorama is RAM based and totally blows FM out
of the water in almost all aspects of data manipulation. He
even knocks Panorama's documentation which is in fact the
most comprehensive I have ever seen for any program. With
the myriad of over 1000 functions and statements I think
Panorama's documentation scheme is close to ideal. There is
the Panorama Reference Guide wizard that is always
available within Panorama as well as the more robust pdf
documentation that can be quickly searched in Preview for
further information. If this material was more compact and
condensed I'm sure Mr. Porter would have complained about
that as well. Add all this together with tutorials, sample
files and a host of wizards and you have everything you
need to get up and running almost at
once.
I have always looked to MacWorld for fair and unbiased
reviews of software and hardware that I may be interested
in acquiring. I have never previously question the honesty
and impartiality of these reviews but now I'm afraid my
trust has been violated and I can no longer rely upon them
as true benchmarks and objective evaluations. Shame on you.
Gary Yonaites
Unseen Software, Chicago, IL
I am writing to complain about MacWorld's recently
published review of ProVue Development's database product,
Panorama. Mr. Porter is a FileMaker consultant/author/guru,
someone who has a vested interest in the success of that
product, which should have disqualified him from reviewing
Panorama. I have used both products for years, and in my
experience, Panorama wins hands down for its power and
flexibility. I hope that you will consider publishing
another review, by an unbiased judge, in the very near
future. I also hope that your publication will institute
(and adhere to) stricter guidelines for selecting its
reviewers.
Stanly
Silverman, Cambrige, MA
Didn't anyone check on reviewer William Porter's
credentials, when he gave Panorama only 3 1/2 mice in his
April review? Did you know Mr. Porter is a Filemaker
developer and has written a book on Filemaker? Can you
spell B-I-A-S?
I've
used both Panorama and Filemaker in the past, and I was
struck by the constant comparisons made to FileMaker in the
review. Panorama "can't compete"; "is not as easy";
"provides no way"; "not as powerful"; "not as well
documented"; "not as easy to learn"; "interface is
peculiar" compared to FileMaker. Gee, considering Mr.
Porter's resume, what a surprise!
MacWorld
itself once said (admittedly a few years ago) "Panorama may
be the ultimate relational database for your desktop…
interfaces, features, and performance blow FileMaker Pro
out of the water." What were you guys thinking?---As a
Panorama user (and MacWorld subscriber) since 1988,
Panorama has been an MVP to me, an amateur, time and again.
Its scripting language is extremely powerful, as I found
out in System 6 days for automating downloads from the San
Diego MUG BBS, Tele-Mac. In later years, its compact
database size, RAM-based speed, powerful formulas,
procedures and forms made my Macs useful and Panorama a
timesaver. Simply put, Panorama has abilities that
FileMaker still can't touch. I could go on, but I'm not
about to write a competing review.
You
should be ashamed of yourself for letting a shill pump up
his own business plan at the expense of a competing
product.
Peter Pallag
San Diego, CA
As a Macworld subscriber for more years than I can
remember, I want you to know that I am appalled by the lack
of responsible journalism demonstrated by your Database
program article by William Porter in the April 2005
Macworld. I am now considering whether to cancel my
subscription as your credibility as a magazine is on very
shaky grounds. If I cannot trust Macworld to present
information in an unbiased and truthful manner, there is
really no reason to bother reading the biased opinions of a
Filemaker sycophant like Mr. Porter. To have a Filemaker
groupie who has a personal financial motive to bash or at
the least unfavorably review Panorama (a competitor)
reflects what I see as a serious problem with your choice
of writers. He did not even address one of the most amazing
aspects of Panorama- that it runs in ram. I have used
Panorama since it first came to market when I was still
using an SE30. I still think it is one of the neatest and
most versatile programs of its kind.
You
have insulted me as a reader and risk losing revenue as I
vote with my dollar. Why don't you give us the background
of the author for your articles so we can be the judge as
to whether we are being handed useful, unbiased
information, or being fed slop from a hired gun. It isn't
lost on me that there is a full page Filemaker
advertisement on page 9 of the April 2005 Macworld. I now
wonder if Macworld is simply a mouthpiece for its
advertisers, yet masquerades and attempts to set itself
forth as a responsible journalistic enterprise. At the very
least a disclaimer that the information provided in
Macworld has been bought and paid for by the respective
advertisers would be helpful. So much for responsible
journalism.
A. Scott Greer,
Ph.D.
Santa Monica, CA
I am simultaneously both saddened and furious with you
and Macworld since I have learned some of the facts behind
your April review of Panorama. The issue is not whether
your reviewer, Mr Porter, liked or disliked Panorama, the
issue is Mr. Porter's, and therefore Macworlds', obvious
lack of integrity, credibility and believability for this
particular review and who knows how many other reviews. Mr
Porter has a huge financial stake in the success of
Filemaker Pro which is in direct competition with Panorama.
Do I have to say more? You are an intelligent man. I have
subscribed to Macworld for many years and believed that
it's editorial integrity could be trusted. That belief is
gone forever.
Out
in the open for all to see on Porter's web site is:
"Polytrope is an Associate-level member of the FileMaker
Solutions Alliance and most of our development work is done
in FileMaker Pro and other technologies from FileMaker,
Inc." It goes on to talk about the Filemaker Pro manual
which Mr Porter is presently authoring. His conflict of
interest is as flagrant as any I have ever seen. Porter did
not even have the integrity to acknowledge his conflicting
interest in doing the review.
Why
didn't Porter disqualify himself from this review? I have
heard that some of your staff has been quoted as saying
that "database reviewers are hard to find". I personally
believe that to be pure spin rubbish but, regardless, it in
no way excuses this situation. My learning this info about
Porter was by chance; how many more of these situations
will I find if I search a little? I do not have the
personal time or willingness to cross-check your reviewers
credentials. That is supposed to be your job.
I
am very sorry that I just mailed my subscription renewal to
Macworld. I shall probably cancel my subscription to
Macworld since my faith in your editorial integrity has
been seriously shaken. If your reviews have no integrity,
your magazine has no value to me.
I
am so very disappointed in you! I used to enjoy Macworld
and thought that it had ethical standards and controls in
place to prevent this kind of a horrible situation.
Saddened by your apparent ethical standards,
Jack Stewart
Phoenix, AZ
As a Panorama user, I'm puzzled over the Panorama V
database review in your latest MacWorld magazine. It begins
with a list of new and old features. Great! Then it
continues with a hodge podge of comparisons with other
databases: It can’t do A as well as FileMaker. It can’t do
B as well as 4D. Can’t do C as well as Servoy. It’s similar
to comparing a fighter jet to an airliner. The jet can’t
hold as many people or fly as far without refueling. ...and
your point is...? These comparisons leave the reader with
no facts and a bad taste for Panorama.
Some
statements are misleading. I don’t know how FileMaker
“links” files, but Panorama’s ability to “link” to other
files, while perhaps different, is easy, flexible. I can
keep track of them. What does he mean by “compile”? Is an
inability to “compile” a Panorama database a problem? Where
does he mention Panorama’s compact database size or blazing
speed in sorting, selecting and other tasks? How ‘bout
Panorama’s “recorder” that records the user’s actions to
automatically create a procedure? I think Panorama’s
extensive documentation with plenty of examples and
pictures is a great feature. The cross references in
documentation and in reference databases are very handy and
certainly not a “labyrinth”. I frequently exchange data
with Excel.
The
review says “Panorama’s programming language is not as
powerful as 4D’s...”. Later, it says, “With Panorama’s
programming language your can manipulate your data in
almost any way you can imagine.” Were these statements
written by the same person?
Perhaps,
the author should have reviewed Panorama on it’s own merits
and faults. Perhaps MacWorld should have picked an
impartial reviewer who has used Panorama as much as the
other databases he cites.
A
brief “Google” search on Mr. Porter indicates he’s deeply
involved with FileMaker and perhaps has an axe to grind.
Example: In May 1994, he said:
“But
let me just warn others on this list that Panorama II (I'm
talking about the full version here) is NOT an especially
easy environment to work in. The interface is extremely
quirky, the scripting language is likewise kind of
counterintuitive, and just setting up a simple address and
phone database can require a fair amount of thought. There
is a reason why Panorama II, which is in some respects more
powerful, still has only a tiny market share compared to
FileMaker Pro--and why they are trying to grab a little
more market share right now with this promotion.
“So
if you have a spare $30 bill lying around, by all means, go
for it. I will, even though I am almost certain I won't use
Panorama II much. I'm just adding a caveat to Professor
Curran's notice, which made PII sound like a no-risk
investment. If you really NEED a good database, spending
$30 to discover that Panorama II isn't it is not such a
bargain.
Will
Porter / University of Houston wmporter@jetson.uh.edu
From:
http://omega.cohums.ohio-state.edu/mailing_lists/CLA-L/Older/log94/
9405c/9405c.282.html
If
MacWorld’s review was written by a different Mr. Porter
than who wrote the above, is the author of FileMaker books,
articles or MacWorld’s October 2004 FileMaker Pro 7 review,
please accept my apologies.
When
I read a review about an application I use, I expect an
accurate and fair review. This Panorama review is not. I
now wonder about the fairness and accuracy of other
MacWorld reviews. MacWorld’s credibility has slipped.
Peter Guerrini
EZMeets Software
Santa Rosa, CA
I take issue with William Porter's review of Panorama
V, which appears in your latest issue.
Mr.
Porter's assessment of Panorama is riddled with
inaccuracies and comes off as rather biased. He cites
features as new which have been present for some time, but
worse, he glosses over most of Panorama's strengths and
even contradicts himself in consecutive paragraphs (He
claims that Panorama's programming language is not well
documented, yet two sentences later he notes that the
documentation is comprised of three full
volumes.)
Panorama's programming language is far deeper and more
flexible than FileMaker Pro's, and to suggest that Excel's
database capabilities could rival Panorama's is simply
ludicrous.
One could argue that Panorama's interface is "quirky", but
it follows Apple's guidelines almost to the letter. If one
is going to use 4D as an example, though, as Mr. Porter
does, Panorama doesn't look so strange all of a sudden. At
least it works with my scroll-wheel mouse, which is more
than I can say for FileMaker Pro.
FileMaker and 4D are useful applications, and I agree that
Panorama has shortcomings. The multi-user implementation is
overdue. In FileMaker, easy stuff is easy, but some things
are just impossible. Panorama sacrifices a little
simplicity at the start of the learning curve, but this
pays huge dividends for those who spend a little time to
learn more. This is why Provue has included the Wizards
that Mr. Porter refers to. (And these Wizards are all
written in Panorama's procedure language, they can be
edited and customized at will)
I can say without reservation that the speed with which
Panorama has allowed me to create and implement
applications has been a major factor in the success I've
had in my profession.
My last issue is Porter's assertion that Panorama is
suitable for only "moderately complicated databases." I
have been using custom Panorama applications to manage the
visual effects, and more recently, the digital
intermediates, on dozens of feature films. I have used
Panorama to generate scripts for Apple's Shake, Final Cut
Pro, and other packages that enable these programs to
communicate and interact with closed systems such as Avid,
Inferno, Lightworks, and Quantel. Surely, if Panorama can
handle such erudite tasks as these, it deserves to rise
above the level of "moderately
complex."
Chris Watts
Visual Effects Supervisor
The Fog
I have just read Mr. Porter's review and want to
express my disappointment. I have been reading your
publication since the eighties and have always considered
your reviews as fair, balanced and the definitive last
word. I am not so sure now.
Everybody
is entitled to his or her opinion. What Mr. Porter sees as
a "quirky interface" is, for me, the very feature that drew
me to Panorama almost 20 years ago. And I may even agree
with Mr. Porter on a point or two.
But allowing a writer, who I am told has an interest in a
competing product, to review is a cardinal journalistic
mistake. If nothing else, it explains why this review has
been so negative and biased.
I know many other happy Panorama users who have
successfully developed "moderately complex databases".
Perhaps you can redeem yourself by allowing one of them to
write a review that may mention some of the wonderful
things we find in Panorama V.
Dr. Wahib S.
Afyouni
Managing Director
Gulf Scientific Corporation
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
I am writing in response to the review of the database
software Panorama by William Porter in the April 2005 issue
(page 37). It is incomprehensible and unforgivable
that MacWorld would ask Mr. Porter to write this review
with the intent to publish it. Furthermore, it is
reprehensible that Mr. Porter lacked the moral integrity to
acknowledge an obvious conflict of interest and agree to
provide a review.
As physicians and scientists we are routinely obligated to
reveal any real or potential conflicts of interest when
publishing or presenting. It is clear that MacWorld
does not operate under the same journalistic integrity
rules governing medicine and journals such as the New
England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) or the Journal of the
American Medical Association (JAMA). I subscribe to
these journals as a professional resource, and have long
held MacWorld and other Macintosh trade publications to be
my professional computing resources. I trust the
peer-review in the NEJM and JAMA, and have done so with
MacWorld as well.
I made the false assumption that your reviews were
substantive and fair. This analogy may seem like a bit of a
stretch, but it is not. Because of the egregious lack of
balance and failure to identify Mr. Porter’ s obvious
conflict of interest you have destroyed my trust in
MacWorld. Mr. Porter’s review did not fairly
represent Panorama’s outstanding features and was cast more
subtly as a description favoring its weaknesses.
Regrettably, the list of Panorama’s features that make it a
superior database is beyond the scope of this letter.
One could easily interpret this review as an effort to sour
potential database software customers away from Panorama,
particularly knowing that Mr. Porter has the potential to
benefit from Filemaker customers. I (and likely many
others) would be interested in knowing what steps, if any,
are taken to identify conflicts of interest in MacWorld
contributors.
My conflict of interest disclosure is that I am a Panorama
user for 10 years. I started using Filemaker when it
first was available and have slowly replaced my Filemaker
databases with Panorama databases. My entire research
program utilizes Panorama. I wonder how Mr.
Porter’s conflict of interest disclosure would read?
Honesty remains the best policy….
John E. Duldner, Jr., MD, MS, FACEP
Director of Research
Office of Research Administration
Department of Emergency Medicine
Akron General Medical Center
MetroHealth Medical Center
Metro LIFEFLIGHT Flight Physician
Northeast Ohio University College of Medicine
Case Western Reserve School of Medicine
I am writing to express my surprise and dismay upon
reading the review of Panorama V database in your March
issue. I have been using Panorama for 15 years now and have
a very different experience than the negative one expressed
by the reviewer. It almost seemed like a Filemaker
promotional piece thinly disguised as a Panorama review.
When I read that he "especially liked Panorama's new
elastic forms feature," I knew this was someone who was not
very familiar with the program as that feature has been
available for a number of years.
During
a three decade career as a systems engineer and later as a
physician who also manages IT for a small medical practice
with Panorama, I have seen and used a lot of software.
Panorama stands out as the most flexible and powerful of
any I have seen. It is also very stable in daily
use.
At two points in the past 15 years I have done a comparison
of databases to use for business startups - including
FileMaker, FoxPro, 4D and Helix - and found Panorama to be
the most suitable. What attracted me to it at the time was
the flexibility in displaying output data and developing
user interfaces. The programming language is rich with
commands that allow fine tuning the screen and print output
with color, position, font, error checking and so forth
that allows me to hide the mechanics behind a user friendly
interface. The other programs, despite their supposed
strengths in data crunching, seemed rigid and
primitive.
Over time I continue to appreciate the power, but I really
appreciate the stability and speed as well. The
documentation, which was cited as a negative, is helpful
and loaded with examples. The extensive cross-referencing
is a timesaver while programming. It stands above most
other software documentation in its breadth of coverage of
the features.
I currently run a small medical office on Panorama with 15
linked relational databases that manages calendar, billing,
correspondence, accounting and reporting functions. We are
on it 12 hours a day flipping from one task to the next
with no hiccups. The 7 day calendar requires several
thousand lookups to display dates, times, names and to dig
through tens of thousands of records to display status
markers next to each name so we know payment and billing
status at a glance. Panorama refreshes the entire calendar
in a couple of seconds. Its RAM based speed feature is a
decided benefit to us.
Panorama does take time to learn, and its commands and
interface are sometimes "quirky," but once you learn it,
you can do many things that other databases can't do. Any
application that comes with over 1600 pages of
documentation needs some time to understand in its
entirety. Panorama seems to me as much a development
environment as a traditional
database.
I hope you will consider reevaluating Panorama and letting
someone more familiar with its many benefits write a more
balanced review. I will keep using it for simple and
complex tasks at home and office.
Scott Corbett,
DO
St. Louis Park, MN
After reading the review of Panorama V by William
Porter in the April '05 issue of MacWorld, I must say that
I strongly disagree with the conclusions. My experience
with database design and development includes HyperCard,
4D, Helix, Fox Pro, FileMaker Pro, PHP/MySQL, as well as
Panorama. There are very few complex database programming
tasks for which I would not choose to use Panorama over any
other product. In fact, Panorama's rich programming
language coupled with it's slick interface tools make
simple work out of complex relational database projects.
Panorama's
extensive programming language is a little bit more
difficult to learn than FileMaker but far easier to learn
than 4D. Once you become familiar with Panorama you
appreciate the features built-in that enable the developer
to quickly construct powerful database solutions. If you
are willing to invest a little effort to learn Panorama's
development environment, there are few limits to what can
be done.--Since Panorama runs in RAM, it has incredible
speed and needs no indexing for facilitating data searches,
selections, or sorts. File sizes are very small and the
Panorama application is remarkably stable. Consequently,
unlike FileMaker, there is no need for a "Recover" menu.
Most long time Panorama users will attest to rarely or even
never loosing data while using Panorama. Many Panorama
developers await with anticipation the Enterprise/network
version expected later this year.
For complexity, one solution I developed in 1996, handles
information needs for a multimillion dollar business with
national and international sales. It still runs under
Panorama 3 and Butler SQL. It consists of 25 interconnected
databases providing instant lookups from a 20,000 client
database. Quotes, invoices, accounts receivable, products
with inventory status, service, returns, UPS label
scanning, instant UPS and US postal shipping rate
calculation including insurance, account aging, sales staff
net profit, and interactive Web database searching are
among those features included. This solution takes only
minutes to generate 350 html files which are accessible via
the Internet. With the present exception of network
connectivity for version V, Panorama's latest version can
do all this and more.
Another example project involves cleaning up MySQL database
dumps. The procedures I've written within Panorama V are
not merely macro commands but more like the Cylons creating
androids on SiFi's BattleStar Galactica; they are self
replicating. One procedure automatically imports a text
file, names each field, and then names and saves the
database. Another procedure then instantly strips out
leading or trailing spaces and replaces or escapes illegal
characters that MySQL does not like. When ready to export
back to MySQL, yet another procedure automatically writes
the programming code specifically for the circumstances, on
the fly, considering field type and name and does so in
mere seconds. Numeric and date fields are converted to text
and are reformatted to UNIX friendly format when necessary.
This procedure take seconds to automatically write the
procedure code. To write this code manually, even with only
20 fields, could take 30 minutes or more. These procedures
can make processing hundreds of differing MySQL files quick
and easily manageable.
With a little knowledge and experience, the Panorama
developer can tackle complex database projects and achieve
professional results more quickly than most other database
environments.
Ken Goff
Accountmaster
Watertown, SD
I am writing about the review of the Panorama database
by William Porter in your April 2005 issue on page 37. I am
very disappointed.
By
way of background, I have used 4D, AppleWorks, FileMaker
Pro, FileVision IV, FoxBase, Phyla ( a short-lived,
object-oriented program that had great potential) and
Reflex. I finally settled on Panorama as the best database
to fulfill many needs. I think both the average and expert
user would be well-satisfied with
Panorama.
The review is disjointed and spends too much time talking
about things Panorama cannot do and cross references that
really are irrelevant. Not mentioning that Panorama is RAM
based (it’s greatest feature) shows base ignorance. And,
what he views as a negative, cross-referencing in the
extensive documentation is a plus. I could go on and on;
but many others have covered the flaws in the
review.
Of course as you well know, Mr. Porter is an acknowledged
FileMaker expert and author. That is not bad in of itself,
but he is the last person that should be doing a Panorama
review. At a minimum, his major conflict of interest should
have been mentioned. All this reflects very poorly on
Macworld’s journalistic ethics.
If you cannot find someone (without a conflict of interest)
to do a review, the solution is very simple: do not do
one.
Finally, other than being a Panorama user I have no
financial or any other interest in the software’s creator,
ProVue Development. Sincerely, Frank A. Pearsall
Underground Railway Press
Frank A. Pearsall
Underground Railway Press
What your reviewer forgot is Panorma's scripting. I've
used MS-Access, 4D, Filemaker, and other DB programs for
Mac and PC. But I've stuck with Panorama since it was
OverVue in 1984. It beats Excel hands down for it's ability
to manipulate data easily. It's scripting language is the
only one that lets me do *anything* I want,and it's
explicit. Filemaker is a black box scripting environment -
Provue's Panarama may have a learning curve but it's power
is amazing. Support is amazing. I've used their product for
20 years and made multiuser support /billing systems over
WANs with their Butler server. Maybe they have work to do
to make the V version better multiuser - it's a 4.5 star
product, not at 3.5 star product. And, they support OS9,
OSX, and Windows!
Mark Shapiro
GoGuys™ Consulting, San Jose, CA
Dear MacWorld — You blew it. I actually subscribe to
your magazine, for 12 years now, and I'm wondering why I
should continue to give you my money after learning that
you allowed a Filemaker developer and author to review
Panorama V without disclosing his affiliation with
Filemaker and financial stake in it.
I'm
not a professional database developer, and I'm not here to
slam Filemaker, which I don't use, don't know, and don't
care about, one way or the other. I'm just a regular person
who has found Panorama to be a great product and very
useful for my family's businesses. Mr. Porter obviously
doesn't know the product or he would have mentioned that it
is ram-based, that elastic forms have been around for
years, that some of us actually like the extensive
documentation and help, that there is great user support
all the way to the top of the company, etc.
What
is most troublesome to me is not that Mr. Porter doesn't
know what he is talking about. It's the absolutely
clear-cut conflict of interest and the lack of disclosure
both by him and your magazine. Didn't anyone at your
magazine check out this guy's cred? Didn't anyone wonder
about the possibility of, uh, bias? I don't know this
person, which is fine, because I prefer people who have
more integrity than he evinces, but I have higher
expectations from your magazine, partially because you
advertise yourself that way. So much for *your* integrity.
How can I trust any of your reviews? Should I just look at
the advertising pages in your magazine and save myself the
time of reading?
Let's
give you the benefit of the doubt and pretend that you
didn't really know all this, or that you had a lazy day and
didn't work hard enough to find an appropriate reviewer.
Then it's clear what the responsible thing to do is: review
the application again, this time by someone who doesn't
have a financial interest in (let alone a book about)
Filemaker. Your typical "MW regrets the error (or
omission)" after a printing a few desultory excerpts from a
couple of letters is way insufficient in a case like this,
you really have to do another review. If you want to do the
right thing, that is.
I
will put a decision on canceling my subscription on hold
until I see what you choose to do.
David Bilides,
Seattle, WA