Harry Potter and Pokemon, Dungeons and Dragons and Star Wars, Showdown Sports, European Soccer and for the Japanese market Duel Masters — and of course Magic: The Gathering, the one that stated it all. What do they have in common? They're all the subjects of popular adventure, fantasy and trading card games! And they're all produced by Wizards of the Coast — a firm now expanding the magic with FileMaker Pro 6, latest version of the award–winning database software application from FileMaker Inc.!

Business Challenge

FileMaker Pro has been a key ingredient in the Wizards' spell book from their earliest days, using the FileMaker–based "Multiverse" application to track all of its projects from the design stage through the layout and typesetting process to managing the text and image data contained in all of the finished products.

Successful Solution

Small wonder, then, that Wizards of the Coast jumped at the chance to help test the upcoming FileMaker Pro 6 — and as they explore the software's new features, they're liking what they see. "Resizable dialogues at last…saves time and frustration," declares Bill LeDrew, the Wizard in charge of Database Administration. "The global find–replace steps will make possible more secure and powerful searches to be done by end users — and without the high maintenance currently required when something changes."

Even more exciting, though, are the big changes promised by FileMaker Pro 6's XML Import/Export features. "The new XML Import/Export feature will enormously improve our ability to pass data seamlessly between FileMaker, our corporate SQL systems, and our Web applications," says Bill. "And the Image Capture feature will let us replace complex importing scripts with much faster and simpler processes."

Bill is also looking forward to exploring the capabilities of the Batch Import and Image Capture features showcased in FileMaker Pro 6. "As our production Mac platform users move to OS X later this year," Bill anticipates, "we can simplify such tasks and replace more complex AppleScripts running in FileMaker Pro with much faster and simpler ones."

As our production Mac platform users move to OS X later this year, we can simplify such tasks and replace more complex AppleScripts running in FileMaker Pro with much faster and simpler ones.

— Bill LeDrew, Database Administrator, Wizards of the Coast