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Product: A very simple yet powerful database for the Mac that doesn't require any special knowledge of database creation.
Developer: FileMaker
Requirements for Bento: Mac OS X v10.5.7, Intel Mac.
Requirements for FileMaker: Mac OS X v10.4.8, G3 through Intel Mac
Price: New - $49 or $99 Family Pack (5 users); Upgrade - $20 rebate for Bento 1 or 2 users
Availability: Out now

Bento, as a Japanese meal, is a box where the various items are cordoned off in small regions. As an application, Bento is a database where each field is cordoned off in small, self-made regions. And a database (so we are all together here) is simply an application that contains data (within fields) that you access easily, quickly, and efficiently. Bento is made by FileMaker, Inc., who also makes the database program FileMaker Pro. FileMaker is probably the best databas application there is. Unfortunately, to construct a full-fledged, full-featured database that's easy to use can be a bit of a challenge. While not as powerful as FileMaker, Bento is easy to use. Now, with Bento 3, it's even better.

Bento 1 got the ball rolling, and Bento 2 firmed up the details. (See Charles Moore's review of Bento 2 and my comparison between FileMaker and Bento 2.) Now, with Bento 3, this simple to use "database for the rest of us" is getting some pretty nifty features.

To help you see why you want to use a database to hold your data, as opposed to (say) Word or Excel, lets say you have a Word document or an Excel spreadsheet that contains all 1000+ members of your club. You want to send all of the people in your zip code information on a special meeting tomorrow night. If your membership is in Word, you will have to do a search for the zip code and then copy and paste like crazy to get all the data together. If your data is in Excel, at least you can sort the zip codes to bring them in proximity of each other and then copy and paste the data out and then pick out the stuff you wanted from all of the extra fields you have. But in a database, you go to your 1000+ member list, do a search for that zip code and then what you are looking at will only be the members who have that zip code. The rest of them are still in the database but were not selected because you excluded them in your search. In addition, since you can have different layouts displaying only the data that you want to see, you can have a layout that only shows the members name and their email.

One of Bento's efficiencies is that it shares the data from your Address Book and iCal application. Now, with version 3, Bento is also sharing your iPhoto data. If you do not use Address Book, iCal, or iPhoto, you can still use Bento, but you will have to manually enter any of that data yourself.

Sharing the same data with applications already on your Mac means when you enter data within (for example) your Address Book, the same data will automatically show up in a Bento collection as if it was directly entered there. Similarly, if you add data to Bento, the new data will show up in your Address Book (or iCal).

Besides obtaining data from your Mac applications, if you do have your club's membership in an Excel (or Numbers) spreadsheet, importing all that data into Bento is as simple as selecting your Template and importing the data from the spreadsheet's document—you're done.

Probably the two biggest improvements to Bento are the inclusion of password protection and the ability to share your databases on an intranet. Thus, if you have wifi at your office or home and want to share the same Bento files, you can—and protect that which needs to be protected.

Sharing is easily done by going into your Bento's Preferences and selecting the new "Sharing" option as seen below. Here, you can select anything from entire databases to selected libraries. Notice below that you can also opt for password protection to get into any shared libraries. Pretend you have a home office and your 6-year-old can access one of the home computers; time for passwords.

Speaking of passwords, below is the new Security tab in the preferences. Here you can lock out your database from anyone. Please note the warning that if you lose your password, you'll probably need to toss your database and start over. Also note that this only protects access to your database, not your data. For that, you need to encrypt your fields.

Yup, Bento 3 lets you encrypt your fields as well. As shown below, data placed in encrypted fields not only is displayed as bullets to keep prying eyes from observing the contents, but also truncates down to fewer characters to prevent "hints" of the password's number of characters. Notice you can display the data as well as copy the data or lock the data. If this is used in combination with preventing access to a database, you are covered.

Below, I took the provided Template called "User Names & Passwords" and added a few fields so I can keep the serial numbers to my software and I can also create links to the web sites for that software and any passwords for those websites. Like I said, it's beyond simple to take any of the provided Templates and adapt it for your needs. [Tip: Does any of your software have multiple blocks of code such as <A56C-3RVG8-45TR-2W3E>? If you copy and paste the whole password into the first field, the rest will properly fill out the rest of the password fields.]

A new display option has been added: thumbnails. As shown below, it doesn't really add that much since it's not necessarily easy to see any of the data within the thumbnails. You can change the size of each thumbnail which can bring the text to readable ranges, but seeing the text can more easily be done by simply showing each record and flipping through them or displaying the table view of the data.

Nonetheless, notice that you can change the display of fields below each thumbnail. In fact, you can have up to four fields data displayed under each thumbnail and you can change the order to your needs. Please note that the potential fields will be the exact same as in your database. If you want some data displayed that isn't currently in your database, create a new field and enter the data within that new field and this new data will then be displayed below each thumbnail. This is, after all, your database. [Whatever fields you select will be the same for each thumbnail.]

As stated, the thumbnail view of your records doesn't seem very helpful, and it probably isn't. On the other hand, one of the new features in Bento is the ability to share your iPhoto catalogs. In this case, your images are not being copied all over the place, as Bento is only accessing the stored catalog data from iPhoto. Thus, the images you are seeing in Bento are only referenced and the size of your database will not grow to disproportionate sizes bloated by your images. Below you can see a list of a variety of various libraries in Bento including a variety of "Albums" from iPhoto.

These images can be used directly in their own database by simply opening up these images in their own record. From here you can add all the data you want. If there isn't a field that you need, create the new field, give it a name, and enter data. Thus, from a set of photos you can maintain your hobbies, display homes you've seen if you are house hunting (or selling), or any other use you can think of where you want to instantly turn your photos into separate records within a database of data.

There are some limitations to using iPhoto images in your database. For one, the data you enter and create lives only in Bento. You will not find any of the data you enter within iPhoto. If you have any iPhoto libraries (databases) from which you want to bring images into Bento, you need to have both applications concurrently open and drag the image from iPhoto into a previously made "Media" field. Thus, if you are creating a database of all your friends and want to put photos in each record, you can do that. In previous versions of Bento, the only way to add images was via a Finder's "Open" type window and selecting the image. While this approach can also be done with Bento 3, if you go to that Open window and navigate to your iPhoto database, you will not be able to access the images; you'll only find iPhoto's database library. The good news is that the images do not need to be in any one specific iPhoto Album, and can (in fact) be spread out across many different albums.

Another limitation is that there is no ability to right (Command)-click on an image in Bento to "Reveal" that image in either iPhoto or the Finder. The best you can do is note the image's name and do a search in iPhoto or the Finder to find that image.

If you have also purchased Bento for the iPhone or iTouch (see my review), Syncing with Bento 3 is still as spectacular as with Bento 2. I only hope that FileMaker (the company) can eventually sync with FileMaker Pro (the software) as easily and efficiently as one can sync between Bento (for the Computer) can with Bento (for iPhone or iPod Touch). Lingering on with iPhoto for a moment though, any databases that are based on an iPhoto Album will not be transferred to the iPhone or iPod Touch during syncing. On the other hand, if you move images from iPhoto into a Bento library, and then sync your iPhone or iPod Touch to the Bento library, any images you have in your database will be transferred to your iPhone or iPod Touch.

Another new feature is the improved email option from the Edit menu. Remember at the beginning of this review when I created the situation in which you want to let the people in your zip code know about a special meeting tomorrow? Well, after finding the people in your zip code, you can select "Email Selected Address(es)" from the Edit menu. [If you only have one email selected, the menu will display in the singular. Otherwise, it will be in the plural.] For some reason, this is currently limited to only 44 emails at a time, but regardless, once selected, it will open Apple's Mail to a new message with the list of email address placed in the "To:" field. Once you've composed your email, you can click your send button or, if you wish, drag the email list from the "To" field to the BCC field and send the email off.

There are a few other features that help fill in missing options, such as the Image Box that creates a special field inside each database. When an image is placed within that field (such as a logo), that image will be seen in every record of that database. In addition, you can now print out a blank form which is handy if you want to hand your customers a form for them to fill out. That way, when you go to type the data into Bento, all of the data is just as it will be as you type it into Bento. Lastly, there are now some 36 templates that ship with Bento. If you want more, you can go to the Bento Template exchange and find over 300 more. Some of these were created by FileMaker Inc., but the vast majority were created by users such as us.

Despite all the wonderful advances in Bento, there still are some disappointments and limitations. I do not know if the limitation that Bento is not a real relational database will be resolved without significantly increasing its learning curve (which is currently very, very small). Bento gets around the relational database limitation by the use of Portals, or views of other Bento databases. Consider a Portal as looking at another database via a window from a different Bento database. FileMaker Pro has had these for years, and they do provide a number of options that otherwise would not be available. Nonetheless, it still is not really relational.

Another curious limitation is the inability to change the type of field after creation. To show you what I mean, below is the screen for creating a new field. When you create a new Field, you need to define what kind of Field Type it is. Then you name the field and set any options. The "Set Options" region changes depending on what kind of field type you've selected.

The bugger here is that if you intentionally or unintentionally selected Number and you meant to select Simple List, there's no way to convert a field from one type to another without having to delete that field and start again. There are some field types you can convert, but not many. Even in FileMaker, if you have to do this, you get a warning that you might lose all the data if there is an incompatibility with the nature of the data. But at least you are warned, and if there are issues, you can deal with them. In Bento, not so much.

In short, while Bento is not a full-power database meant to run big companies like FileMaker Pro is, it can run a small home business and certainly help you keep your family organized. Keep in mind that FileMaker Pro is $300, and you need to create, organize, and setup all of the fields, relationships, scripts, and calculations yourself unless you can use and adapt one of the many templates that are provided. Meanwhile, Bento is $49 and adding new fields beyond those that are part of any Template is so dirt-simple that anyone can do it.

Earlier, I referred to Bento as "the database for the rest of us." For those of you who do not recognize the phrase, it's a take-off of an advertising phrase for the Mac in the '90s ("The computer for the rest of us"). It was true of the Mac back then, and it's true of Bento now. Like I said, Bento cannot be used for hard-core database demands, but for the average user, it can do pretty much most of what you'll need at a small fraction of the price.

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Buy Bento 3

___________ Gary Coyne has been a scientific glassblower for over 30 years. He's been using Macs since 1985 (his first was a fat Mac) and has been writing reviews of Mac software and hardware since 1995.