Being “the web guy” in a FileMaker shop can sometimes be a solitary existence… even when you’re called upon to work on a FileMaker/Web integration point you usually get only a glimpse of the FileMaker solution you’re talking to, and the FileMaker developer gets only a glimpse into whatever it is you’re putting together. Most of the time there is not much discussion about what is going on behind the developers’ respective hoods, and that’s generally OK. After all, the reason you have people specializing in the two different disciplines is so that nobody has to be an expert in both.

It was therefore with some trepidation that I attended my first FileMaker Developer Conference this year, wondering how well I’d be able to relate to the FileMaker crowd and what I might gain from the several web-related presentations and workshops in the schedule. I needn’t have worried. Between ESS, the FileMaker API for PHP, and plugins that embed the PHP interpreter into FileMaker itself, people are finding a lot of different ways to integrate FileMaker data with a lot of different web technologies.

More important than the details and code of those integration techniques, though, is the attitude accompanying them. Advanced FileMaker Developers are embracing PHP as just another tool in the box, not a competing, threatening, or inferior technology. It’s going to be an interesting year.