I'm not very fluent with the Java web platform. If you desire to use a BIRT defined report in a web application, good luck. There's lots of tutorials for BIRT on the Eclipse page above. The thing blows my mind all the time because it is so mature of a product. PLEASE NOTE: BIRT requires a pretty significant learning curve but you will not regret it. It's every bit as good as the report builder in MS Access. Check into it here: īIRT can connect to a variety of data sources and is intended as a Java application reporting tool, but it will also render/export reports in a lot of formats including PDF and DOC. I opted for the development kit version - an enormous 220 meg download, but worth it. īuilding reports as good as FileMaker's or MS Access was a difficult find for a long time until I ran across the free Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools (BIRT) built into versions of Eclipse. To design new MySQL databases like a pro, download and install the free MySQL Workbench. Alternatively, you can use a separate computer or virtual machine (on your local network) with MySQL installed.

Installation is beyond the scope here but there's tons of help via Google search. On the Mac, you can install and run MySQL. There are some decent online services like Zoho Creator (free) and TrackVia (not free) but if you MUST have something very close to Access or FileMaker installed on your Mac natively, I can offer the following suggestion. I've not found a single app equivalent to MS Access for the Mac.

Database for mac os x