Could you recommend a QR/bar code based inventory/storage management app for a home with 3 storage spaces?

MS Access has to be the most disappointing software I have ever used. See my experiences at
http://www.vdrsyd.com/aoaug/ms_dig.html#vibes
I cut my teeth on SPI Open Access for DOS - a brilliant product that was years ahead of its time. I still use it for some of my legacy work.

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Iā€™ve had to use Access and PCs at three former jobs, and it was a nightmare compared to FileMaker Pro. Though itā€™s been years since Iā€™ve had to use it, Iā€™m not sure if much has changed. Accessā€™ interface is awful and thereā€™s a big learning curve that I donā€™t think I fully mastered.

Itā€™s extremely difficult, and often impossible, change views of Access databases and to customize reports. You have to slog through Accessā€™ not very magical Wizards that make it difficult, if not impossible, to restructure and to create different views. You can pretty much only do what the evil and annoying Wizards will allow. In Filemaker, you just do what you need to do, quickly and easilyā€¦no biggie. Searching in Access wasnā€™t always very intuitive or easy, again, thereā€™s a comparatively big learning curve.

Though I never used the feature, you can easily publish to the web with Filemaker.

Iā€™m hoping for a new MacBook Pro to be announced on Mondayā€™s Unleashed event. From what Iā€™ve read here on TidBITS Talk, TapForms sounds like a good, and very much less expensive alternative, to FileMaker Pro. Iā€™ve never needed to upgrade from FileMaker Pro 11 on my ancient MacBook Pro, so I will give TapForms a try.

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Oh, I misunderstood. Thanks

I will go with Tap Forms, but I am curious: does FileMaker Pro have a steep learning curve ?
thank you

Though there is a learning curve, itā€™s a relatively very, very small one. You can be up and running very quickly, even if youā€™re a database newbie with a lot of complex relational stuff to set up and manage. For me, Access was a nightmare, especially with the Wizards hanging over my head and constantly nagging. At two other jobs I was stuck using Telemagic and Act, which were impossibly limited and unintuitive, and Telemagic was DOS based. What nightmares.

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Your comments are very helpful. At least you can rest assured that your past experiences have profited others. Thanks very much for taking the time to post.

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A little bit of FileMaker historyā€¦Steve Jobs spun it off from the rest of the Claris apps because Microsoft refused to include Access in Office for Mac. He had recently returned to Apple, and convincing developers to update and build applications for a tiny base of users of a platform just about everyone was convinced was on the path to total failure was a big hurdle to overcome.

The only reason Gates kept the limited edition of Office for Mac is that Steve Jobs kept incessantly suing Microsoft over all sorts of issues during the time when MS was being sued by Netscape in the Supreme Court, and MS was inundated with bad press on both sides. And Steve made sure that FileMaker was a million times more intuitive than Access, and he developed Appleā€™s free productivity suite.

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I know that this could be too nerdy for the specific goal of this thread, but probably the Mac community should be more aware of LibreOffice Base <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LibreOffice_Base>, a free and open-source relational database management system part of the LibreOffice suite. You can build interconnected forms from templates of all sorts, and it can read barcodes as requested by this thread. Being a relational DBMS, it has the full power of SQL beneath, and it can even connect to external relational database engines such as MySQL or PostgreSQL.
ā€“e.

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Very interesting. Why is it not widely discussed as an alternative to FileMaker ? Especially considering the subscription base and the price of FileMaker and Provue.

There is some relevant info about Filemaker here, including a free trial version:

https://content.claris.com/claris-inventory-management-resources.html

There are some barcode tips here:
http://filemakerinventoryresources.com/Barcodes.html

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You can still buy non-subscription copies. From their pricing page, scroll down and click on the link in the ā€œSIngle Licensesā€ section. You will be taken to the individual license store page. The price there is a one-time charge of $540 (plus an additional $20 if you want them to send you a DVD with the installer).

The page says ā€œSingle licenses are for individual users that do not need to share data with others.ā€ I assume this means there are no server capabilities, which may or may not be acceptable for your situation.

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Some of us have to use databases for work :worried:. I have been using Filemaker for over a decade but refused to ā€œupgradeā€ to their subscription system.

For work, I use postgresapp.com for Mac (free complete preinstalled PostgrsSQL server app running on a Mac) as a backbone SQL RDBMS, and dbeaver.io as Mac GUI app (free database tool for developers, database administrators, analysts and all people who need to work with databases). You can try, as an alternative to DBeaver, the much simpler to use and more friendly Mac GUI app tableplus.com (69$).
ā€“e.

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thank you !

hello @bb1 @MMTalker @mpainesyd @mpainesyd @jzw @paul9

Thank you all very much for your replies.

I ended up buying Tap Forms based on cost (others were not an option), only to realize that there is something fundamental that I donā€™t understand about creating a home inventory with a database in general terms (nothing to so with Tap Forms).

Below is an example of the Tap Forms home inventory template. The template has no use for me, and Icanā€™t really see who would use it, but thatā€™s not my point.

My idea of inventory is to put things in storage and being able to subsequently find them.

So there are 2 essential categories.

1- objects

2- locations

Each category contains a long list of sub-categories, for example,

  • the category computer contains many sub-categories, for example object ā†’ computerā†’ cableā†’ USBā†’ USBCā†’ for external SSD or object ā†’ Toolkit ā†’ screwdriver ā†’ xyz type

  • the category location contains multiple sub-categories for example: location ā†’ storage space on main street ā†’ building #6 ā†’ room 702 ā†’ shelf 4ā†’ top ā†’ right or home ā†’ closet off bedroom ā†’ right ā†’ 3rd drawer

I am trying to understand how you would setup the database.

I could simply setup a table with a different column for each category of object and of location, and a row for each record (combination of object+location) but I would end up with a huge table tedious to manage, and I would basically lose the interconnection between sub-categories. The database would not show that USBC is a subcategory of USB, cable and computer.

thanks in advance for your time and help

There is a good description of a relational database here:

In essence you create separate tables (similar to a spreadsheet worksheet) for different entities. For example you might have one table for the objects/items you are storing and another for the storage locations. Each record (row) in these tables has a unique field (column) such as an item code for the Items table. Other fields might be a useful description of that item, purchase cost, date purchased etc. Location codes could be an abbreviation of your (relatively) complex storage system.Again the fields in that table would give more information about the meaning of that code.
You can then create a new table that links items with storage location. This table can be as simple having one field with an item code and a second field with a location code.
The advantage of this approach - using a linking table - is that you can have multiple items stored in one location or multiple locations for the same item (if you have more than one of these items). You can also search the database for items that have not yet been allocated a location and for locations that contain no items.

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thanks very much ! exactly what I was looking for. I will read the article and follow up if anything is not clear. Very kind of you to have gone to the trouble of finding a reference.