Bento review

by Michael Muchmore

When you’re using it, you may not notice that FileMaker’s Bento is, at heart, a database management program with records, fields, tables, forms, and all the rest. In simplifying the organization of information—contacts, calendars, events, and even digital media content—the application goes a few steps beyond the company’s FileMaker, long our Editors’ Choice for personal and small-business databases. Bento also costs far less: It will sell for about $49 (direct) versus $299 for FileMaker Pro 9. You do lose much of the latter’s power, though, and the new product runs only under Mac OS X Leopard, so Tiger holdouts—not to mention Windows users—need not apply.

Installation

The Leopard requirement may seem artificial—perhaps a case of an Apple subsidiary forcing more OS upgrades, but that’s not the case. The executable is far smaller—27MB versus 300MB for Filemaker—and a good part of the reason is that the software uses features available only in Apple’s new operating system. In addition to Leopard, you’ll need at least 512MB of RAM (1GB is better) and a system built around a G4, a G5, or an Intel processor running at 874 MHz or more.

Leopard allows other apps to interact with Address Book and iCal. Mac users may say (as I did) that both these apps already work just fine as standalones, and there’s no need for another way to access them. But the company points out that setting up Bento to work with those programs lets you use the information in, for example, databases for projects or events. Happily, any information I added to a contact in Bento was immediately updated in Address Book, and vice versa. Unfortunately, the database has no calendar display. I kind of like seeing my dates in that format, so that missing feature is somewhat of a drawback.

When I popped the final release disc into my Mac, the installer greeted me with a Home window from which I could start using the software, watch a “learn about” video, or, if I wanted, set up integration with Address Book and iCal, creating a “library” (do we really need a murkier “friendly” substitute for the not-very-scary term database?).

 Be Your Own Librarian

Bento stores information in four levels: libraries, collections, records, and fields—each a superset of the next. You’ll see your libraries listed down the left-hand side of the interface; and on the right, all the fields available in the library you’ve selected on the left. The View menu lets you turn off either side panel or both, so you can see just your records.

After taking advantage of the preexisting Address Book and iCal libraries, it’s time to get started using Bento by creating your own new libraries, which you can do several ways: with the help of a prebuilt template, from scratch using the blank template, or by importing from a CSV file. You’ll find the choices readily available when you click on the Home window’s “Create a library to store data” choice. That presents you with 24 template options, categorized under Education, Personal, and Work, in addition to a Blank template. Note that CSV is the only format you can transfer data to and from, and that you can’t include a lot of the special-field content Bento allows—digital media, for example—with that format. Both limitations need to be addressed. At the very least, you should be able to import and export spreadsheet data.

I decided to create a library of all my video and music discs using the Digital Media template. It was simple to enter titles, descriptions, notes, and the media content itself via the pleasing black interface. I could even easily add fields in case I wanted more than one media file per record, for example, or decided I’d like to be able to look up what shelf I stored a disc on, or who I’d lent it to. But, nice as this feature is, every Mac comes with iTunes, which can slice and dice your media collection any way you want, so organizing media files alone doesn’t seem a reason to buy Bento. Further, Bento doesn’t give you a way to import iTunes playlists. Leaving out this sort of link to the fantastically popular app seems to be an oversight, to me.

I decided to build another library from scratch using the Blank template, which gave me an empty, slightly intimidating graph-paper-like background and just two fields: Date Created and Date Modified. In the next step I could add more fields by choosing from 19 that included Choice (which pops up a menu of options), File list, time and date, currency, related records list, and calculated.

Those last two—pretty sophisticated for consumer software—should make database jockeys perk up. Related fields let you pull in information from other libraries—for example, a list of student contacts for a class-project library. You can even add a list (we’ll get to that) by dragging a collection from another library onto a form you have open. Calculated fields can perform tasks like combining text with a name, adding tax to a price, or displaying the number of days left to complete an assignment.

To design the user-entry form for this built-from-the-ground-up library, I simply dragged the fields I wanted from the column on the right. I found it easy to add new fields by clicking on a Plus sign at the bottom of the list or by highlighting a field, clicking on a gear icon, and choosing Duplicate from the context menu that popped up (another choice let me edit the properties of existing fields).

Collections, Smart and Otherwise

Sometimes you want to see only a subset of a library’s contents; that’s where collections come in. These appear in Bento’s left-hand column, just under their associated libraries’ entries. You can create an empty collection, one filled with a group of records you manually select in table view, or a Smart Collection. The last uses the Advanced Find feature, which lets you specify selection criteria based on a record’s field values, such as “all records whose price is greater than $100.” If you enter a new record in a collection that pulls from the Media library, the new record will remain in the source library and will also appear in the collection.

Databases have advantages over spreadsheets. Along with the ability to use entry forms that include pictures and other media, you can create summaries and reports from your records and search based on criteria in any field. Turning on Bento’s “Show summary row” feature adds a row to the bottom of a table. Clicking on any cell in this bottom row brings up a context menu that gives choices for the type of information to display—such as Sum, Count, Average, Minimum, and Maximum —based on the column’s field type. For example, with a date field, Minimum and Maximum become First and Last). Unfortunately, Bento doesn’t have an actual feature for producing reports. You can approximate a report feature using collections and summaries, changing displayed fields to those you want. Printing is limited to the current view; you can print only selected records or all of them.

No Sharing Your Bento

Granted, Bento is for individual use, but some kind of sharing facility would be a big help. Zoho Creator may lack Bento’s many useful templates, but it lets you share your database with chosen users or anyone on the Web—and it’s free. Not only can you not make a Bento library available to others online, you can’t even make a copy of a Bento library file to send someone unless your library uses only the limited fields you can export to CSV text format—and that means no media. The simple, built-in backup tool that Bento includes for safety can save to removable media, though, so you could use it as a (cumbersome) way to transfer libraries to other machines—if they’re also running Bento.

If you like to keep your CD collection organized, have records of your household possessions for insurance purposes, or want to keep track of inventory and multimedia in your one-person office, then Bento is a handy, easy, low-cost, and attractive option. It also makes a lot of sense for tasks like managing classwork and vehicle-maintenance records. For managing contacts, appointments, and media, however, I think other tools would serve you better. You can handle contacts more easily in OS X’s own Address book, appointments in iCal, and media organization in iTunes, iPhoto, and iMovie. If you have a very particular set of needs for custom fields and data relationships, Bento is a good choice. The only drawback is that you won’t be able to share the wealth with others. For that you’ll need to move up to FileMaker or use an online database like Zoho Creator.