ToolBOX was the rare personal project from which I actually made a few dollars. It’s a FileMaker Pro database for tracking software licenses. It was created in FileMaker Pro 3.0, and I have no idea if it still runs in current versions of the database as I haven’t upgraded in a while. When I built it, I pulled out all the stops and tried to include every FileMaker bell and whistle I could think of. It relies on quite a bit of scripting. I created it primarily for myself, but sold it as shareware as well.

The application consists of five linked FileMaker Pro databases, which is what you had to do back then: link separate databases to get FileMaker to behave like a relational database.

As it was coming together, I added records for the software packages I owned, but frankly, I’m not an extraordinarily gifted record keeper. It wasn’t long before my own inventory was out-of-date, and I was reduced to rummaging through piles of discs and manuals to find serial numbers to re-install things. Pretty sad, huh?