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Provides: Database functionality on your iPhone and iPod touch
Developer: FileMaker
Requirements: An iPhone or an iPod touch (Bento 2.0v4 for Mac required for synching between iPhone and Mac versions of Bento)
Price: $4.99
Availability: Now
Version Reviewed: 1.0.1

If you have a cell phone, any cell phone, you have a database in your pocket. At least if you store any numbers on that phone. Think about it; do you type in the numbers for home every time you call home, or do you scroll through a list of people to find a specific person, find him, and then press the green button. With that in mind, think about how it would be to store a full range of data, facts, numbers, and whatever knowledge you wanted on your iPhone or iPod touch. Well, with Bento for the iPhone or iPod touch, you can. The catch is: can you search for the data you want to find?

[Note: tremendous assistance was provided by Peter Castro on this review]

Here at Applelinks, we've posted two articles on Bento. First, there was the review by Charles Moore. Later, I did a comparison between Bento and FileMaker, Filemaker Inc.'s premier database application. Now, adding to their product line, FileMaker has added Bento in your pocket.

Bento, in a nutshell is a full fledged database that doesn't require any database knowledge and/or background to create, organize, or use. You are still required to fill the data in, but some of that data can come directly from your computer's Address and Calendar applications right off your Mac without your having to type in a single character.

A database can either be flat or relational, and Bento is sort of a mix. A flat database can contain only one train of data. That is, if you use a flat database for your invoices, every time customers purchased items, you'd have to enter their personal data. A relational database could have one database of customers and another for sales, and when customers made a purchase, their customer number would trigger their information to be entered in the invoice automatically. Likewise, if you looked up your customers, you could see a list of everything they've purchased. Bento can't do that, but it does have a "portal" dynamic that lets it view data in another database (although interaction is, well, nonexistent). Bento for the iPhone or iPod touch does not have these portals.

[Note: for simplicity sake in this review, I will be using the term "Bento for iPhone" instead of "Bento for iPhone and iPod Touch." I hope you understand. There is one major difference in useable features between the iPhone and the iPod and that is the former can take photos, the latter cannot. More on how that affects Bento for iPhone a bit later.]

I should point out that you do not need the full Bento Application ($49), but it does help. I have an iPod touch, and my friend Peter helped me on this review with his iPhone. I find typing on the virtual keyboard is a bit of a pain and simply not as efficient as typing on a keyboard. It can be done, but, if given a choice, please give me a keyboard. Thus, any typing I can do on my computer and sync to Bento for iPhone, the better. One other limitation currently is that you cannot tip your iPhone over on its side to obtain a wider keyboard. This would be a great asset for us "clumsy thumbs" out there. Fortunately, if you have Bento on your computer, you can sync your data between the two and, assuredly, that's the best way to enter data on your iPhone. More on syncing in a moment.

Whatever data you are keeping in Bento, simply keep in mind that Bento is a data storage program. Whether it's addresses, calories, train schedules, birthdays, or books in your book collection, Bento will help you organize, store, and recall that data. That's what it's for and that's what it does.

To better appreciate what a database is, consider the business card. You have a leaky faucet so you call a plumber. He's a good worker and you'd use him again so you get his card. Do you file that card under "P" for "plumbing," "B" for "Bill's Plumbing," "H" for household help," "J" for "Jim" (Jim was the guy who came from Bill's Plumbing), or "E" for "Emergency." With a business card, these decisions are very important. With a database, they are irrelevant because any of these "keywords" can be entered into the record for this guy and you can search for any of these items and always find your plumber...or any plumber you've ever entered into your database. But this is one of the biggest limitations to Bento for the iPhone: you can only search amongst two fields.

A database is composed of fields. There could be a field for the first name and the last name and an address, phone number, city, state, zip, and whatever else was determined to be necessary for that record. [A record is all of the data for one entry. That is, first and last name, address, city, zip, state for one person would be one record. A second person would be a 2nd record.] The reason for placing separate pieces of data in separate fields is that this makes the whole database more functional. If you have one field for a person's name, how could you sort by the last name when the field is filled with (sic) Gary Coyne? Likewise, how could you sort by Zip code or City if all of the address information was placed in one field. Simply, the more you can break data into functional fields, the more effective and productive a database can be. But there's a catch; you can't search for zip codes if you are searching (for example) in the Last Name field. You have to search within the zip code field to look for all of the people in a particular zip code.

Now, in one regard, Bento for the iPhone is a bit better than other databases in that it can search within two fields at the same time. The catch is that those two fields are the identifying fields for that record. So, let's say in your address book you have a field that identifies what your relationship is with that person. For example, you know Joe because you bicycle with him every Saturday and you know Bill because you often go out taking photographs together. What would be great is that you can do a search on bicycle and just your bicycle friends are displayed. The catch is there is no way to do a search on any field other than the first two. So, you figure that you'll just make the "friend" field one of the first two. Unfortunately, that means that you will not see Joe Panelli and Bill Schwartz, but Joe Bicycle and Bill Photography.

There are ways around this, such as making separate collections, but the issue remains that to have a database where you cannot search in any field is a big stumbling block.

Nonetheless, a database is still a database; if you are a book collector, you could enter in every book you have. Later, if you are in a bookstore and you see an original copy of Fahrenheit 451, if you've entered your book collection into Bento, you could quickly find out if you already have it or not, how much you paid for it, and what its condition was. This is easy because you can have the first two fields the title and the author. If you want to search by publisher, it's not going to happen.

To help you get started, Bento comes with a variety of previously named project categories. These include Projects, Contacts, To Do Items, Recipes, Diet Log, Events, Files, Inventory-, Home Inventory-, Products for Sale-, Items Sold-, Event Planning, Time Billing, Expenses, Exercise Log, Vehicle Maintenance, Classes, Digital Media, Student List, Membership List, Equipment, Issue Tracking, Customers, and Donations. And if you want to go off into a different direction, there is also a "Blank" project that you can use to create whatever you want. The pre-set projects all have pre-established fields relevant to that subject, but at any time you can create new fields for custom reasons. Below is an image showing the "album cover" view of the various projects within Bento:

As alluded to earlier, one of the big strengths of Bento for iPhone is that you can easily sync your data from your iPhone to your computer and back very easily. In fact, it does it wonderfully.

Below you see an image on the left that shows the basic concept of syncing your iPhone with the desktop Bento. First, you have to make sure you are using the same wi-fi network for both. Then, you let the iPhone know that you want to sync. Arandomly generated four diget number is provided that you enter in your desktop Bento, and you are done. Subsequent syncing is all automatic. It's very slick and impressive.

To test, I created a project in Bento and had three records: one, two, and three (I wasn't being creative here, just doing a test). I then synced my iPod touch to the computer by clicking on the "sync" button in Bento for iPhone. Moments later I had this project on my iPod with all three records. I then added "four" to the iPod touch and I added "five" to the Bento on my computer. I then synced one more time. I now had records one though five on both my iPod and the Computer.

That's cool. No, better than that, that's fantastic.

If any of you have worked with FileMaker Pro, one of the big issues is to work on the same database on two computers. You now have two different documents, and it's not very easy to resolve the two. Bento and Bento for iPhone wins this test hands down.

Up until the version 3 update for the iPhone and iPod touch, one of the big advantages of Bento over the Address book application in the iPhone was Bento's search capability. However, in version 3 of the iPhone's software, that feature is now in the Address book, so that advantage is no longer an issue. In addition, you can now rotate the Address book 90° to access the wider keyboard, so what once was the lesser is now the leader. Alas, you cannot search in any field in the Address Book either, so both are a wash on that regard.

Probably the best dynamic of Bento with the iPhone (not iPod touch) is that you can take photos with the iPhone and those photos can be part of the database record. Thus, my friend Peter who collects old watches has a database of his watches including photos of the watches that he took with his iPhone.

One last example of some of the disappointments with Bento can be illustrated by the expense record keeper provided with the templates. Within this template you can log in all of your expenses. Unfortunately you cannot obtain totals for any given collection of expenses. A similar limitation exists within Bento. You can do a calculation as long as the data comes from the same record (e.g., 2 dinners at $35 each), but not if the data must be pulled from more than one record. I'm sorry, but that's lame for a database.

I can forgive a lot with Bento for the iPhone as it does do a lot and it's in its first iteration. However it's what Bento for the iPhone can't do that I find troubling. At a minimum, the ability to rotate the phone 90° to assist typing is a must for version 2 as well as the ability to search within any field. This is a database, and Bento for the iPhone must start acting like one. On the other hand, if you use Bento, spending the $4.99 on Bento for the iPhone is essentially a no-brainer. Syncing the two is about as good as any syncing I've ever seen, and lets you maintain both with no problems or issues whatsoever. Plus, having Bento means that you do not have to depend upon typing in Bento for the iPhone. Because of this, I'm giving Bento for the iPhone a 3 "A" rating. If you do not have Bento for the Macintosh, I would give this a 2 "A" rating.

___________ 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.