In the Mac world, Ninox may do the trick. You own it and there are iOS versions that premit data synchronization.

I meant this to be a reply to the PanoramaX thread - sorry,

Mike

They're also working on an updated version of the Ninox Server (due for release Q1 2018, I gather). There's the Ninox Cloud, a service you can subscribe to (and is reasonably priced, in fact), but the Ninox Server (which I'd been experimenting with as an alternative to FileMaker Pro) suddenly disappeared, so I was anxious! The previous version of the Server ran on Windows and Mac, a big advantage.

Ninox is very powerful, but so is Tap Forms Organizer. The major difference is the use case: Ninox is designed for multi-user situations, Tap Forms for individual ones (although small businesses do use Tap Forms as a central server - somewhat risky, in my view). Ninox is undoubtedly the best alternative to the increasingly expensive FileMaker Pro.

Both Ninox and Tap Forms share a particular idiosyncrasy: records are displayed as both lists and forms. In Tap Forms' case, you can expand the list to look like a spreadsheet, while still seeing the individual form for each record. Ninox also gives you some flexibility on the display front. It's worth evaluating both of them before opting for something like Panorama X.

For most of us, Ninox or TapForms is likely powerful enough. Panorama X is for large databases and for lots of data manipulation and handling. I'm not sure if you were implying that you can't build forms in PX, but you certainly can. The Demo Movie reveals lots of nifty features, none of which I need. Personally, I wish Bento were still available. That was the perfect app for my needs!

Steve Z.

I just took another look at Ninox. I could be wrong, but it seems there is no convenient way to print mailing labels. When you want to print, it looks as if it automatically creates a PDF that opens in Preview for printing. I couldn't find any reference to mailing labels in the documentation. All you Ninox users, am I missing something?

Steve Z.

I bought Ninox a year or two ago, and initially thought it would be of some help, and there are things it can tell you a spreadsheet can't. I loaded property taxes for our county into a Ninox table from a CSV file, which is more than you can do with Excel - for our backwoods county, population 26,000, there are over half a million different bits of taxable property. That's more than Excel can load.

Ninox quickly showed me the total valuation for our county is $11 billion and $45 million a year is harvested in taxes.

Ninox breaks down when you want to do any manipulation not baked in to the application. For instance, I decided to add a join to a second table, but I can't find a way to do that. At import-time, you are supposed to be able to define links between tables. You put a simple formula into a certain field, but I can't find where that field is defined.

General DB looks more flexible in that regard, since it will work with SQLlite databases and allows for creating views with joins between tables. There's a trial version, but the full fledged thing is just ten bucks. Looks worthy, and besides, the CRIMP acronym used here does not apply to me because I can stop any time I want.

In fact, I think I will right after grabbing a copy of General DB. Unless, of course, there is something I need after that.

For reference, http://portabledatabases.com/generaldbforthemac.html