Imagine my surprise today to read about a design decision in Google’s Chrome that allows saved passwords to be read by anyone with access to your computer.  Now this revelation does not affect me because I never, ever, EVER elect to save passwords when prompted by my browsers.  That goes for IE, FireFox, Chrome, and Safari – Windows, OSX or iOS.  NEVER.  But I do need a central place to store those passwords for reference.

Google says that true security must come at the OS level.  That is to say if someone can login to your computer, or you leave it open, no amount of security will help you.  This is technically true because if there is an authorized user who needs to see the passwords (i.e. YOU), the decode key has to be stored somewhere.  The best you can do is make it as difficult as possible for someone to get that key.  Storing your passwords within the browser is not a safe storage method.

So now I’m proud to say I’m using C-WINGS for my passwords, and you should too!

Contact me to hear more about the encryption routine I’ve built for C-WINGS.

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In my opinion, there are many advantages a database has over a spreadsheet. One is that custom views of the data, and custom manipulations of the data can be created, saved and re-deployed. For example, with a contact database, it is possible to build reports for mailing labels, call sheets, lists and rosters. It is possible to conduct a search by various criteria, sort the found records, switch to a report layout and store that process to be conducted again in the future. There is virtually no limit to the number of processes that can be stored in a database.

Another advantage is that a database can be used by more than one person simultaneously throughout an office, or over the internet. Spreadsheets can only be used by one person at a time.

I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge that very sophisticated data manipulations can be constructed and saved with spreadsheets. However, only someone capable of building that type of spreadsheet is able to use it, and even the most sophisticated users have been known to make mistakes which “break” underlying caclulations.  With a database, it is possible to build a sophisticated application and to establish a set of user rights and privileges to protect the structure and contents of the database.

Related Databases

Sometimes, data needs to be stored separately to be made most useful. Related databases are put into use when there is a “one to many” relationship between data types. The best way to define a “one to many” relationship is by describing an example.

Imagine an invoicing system. There are customers, invoices and items. Customer records might consist of company, address, phone, email and contact name. Item records might consist of name, description, SKU, cost and price. Each invoice would contain the ordering customer’s details and the ordered item’s details. Each customer would have many invoices, and each invoice would have many items. In order to build a system that would customer details and item details onto an invoice, each data type would need to be stored in a separate database table.

FileMaker Pro

I am a proponent of FileMaker Pro for several reasons.

For the developer, a FileMaker Pro solution it is easily taught to users, and for clients and end users, it is easily learned.

Depending on the client and the user community, as people become more sophisticated in their understanding of the application, users can be empowered to make changes to design and functionality. Some of my clients welcome this evolution and take over the responsibility for maintenance and development, and others reject the concept and prefer to bring all requests for database enhancements to me.

Lastly, for me anyway, it is an enjoyable medium to use.

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