Admittedly, yes 
I’d like to add that the server developed in Vapor can also be compiled to a Linux target. As a web server it is agnostic of the client OS.
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do you do all the Swift programming? For me it would definitly exceed my capacity to learn taming such a framework...
Yes, I do. It is a steep learning curve at the beginning. Once you get your head wrapped around the concept you start seeing how all this works. Apple provides a large amount of documentation, demo videos, sample code and there are great tutorials on i.e. Udemy and books like "Das Swift-Handbuch" ( got the previous version).
You need to get over the frustration of not understanding a thing at first. Stick to it and things begin to work out and you acquire the ability to produce code that compiles. Once you have your first app skeleton up and running it is a rewarding experience. Excellent brain gymnastics, after all.
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The same learning curve approach applies to the Spring framework. Initially it's daunting, but as you use it more and more, you get used to ideas like "dependency injection" and wonder how you lived without them...
Spring is used so much, you rarely get stuck on any problem for long.
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The book:
Hmm.. I bought it, threw it away after the first few annoying errors, tried to follow the autor's channel on Youtube, could not follow..
The best training I found, is 'swiftfull thinking' on Youtube. I had to start over, beginning from scratch. It is still hard, but I got the feeling that I will find some light... I'm still on the bootcamp lessons...
Error msg like 'this feature needs macOS 12 or later (I'm on ventura, macOS 13) or several problems because I need applications for macOS, not iOS (most of the stuff on swift is for iOS) make it harder than used to be, for example Buttons... do not work the same for macOS as for iOS
Swift Playground is also helpful to test things, works quite well on iOS (iPad)
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to me that sounds like taking a sabbatical would be the best approach 
on the other hand since most of my audience is on Windows (80-85%) Swift does not make sense anyway
That's true, when mainly serving Win machines, Swift-based clients don't make sense.
There are other IDEs for developing Win apps in various languages or true x-plat (macOS, Win and various mobile OS) .
You could look here https://ifnotnil.com, searching for 'x-plat' or asking people there for advise.
Agreed.
Nothing against Swift and I'm certainly not a Windows fan, but I don't want to be locked into the Apple ecosystem (Swift, in this case) any more than being locked into the Claris ecosystem.
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Sounds like many of us are on tech walkabouts...
I'm doing the same but with PHP where I can dev just about everything that I could in FM, but without the licensing issues. 
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My goal, when possible, is to just have FileMaker as one of many possible clients so it's not a dependency and I'm not held hostage.
I fear each new FileMaker release as they always seem to introduce something minor, but useful to some, but at the same time, they introduce some weird new restriction like the wacky (I'll never use it because of this) "Data API metering" (metering software running on my server, that I've paid for?). Just crazy.
When is the keystroke metering coming? 
(I shouldn't give them any more wacky ideas...)
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So from what I'm reading they are not really listening. They branched off a diff version, no one was interested. So now they will merge the branches and we'll all be stuck with Connect while they could have been updating FileMaker.
I cannot imagine using FM without the MBS GUI stuff or Developer Assistant.
It's very irritating that they work on things like Connect while ignoring the core product.
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I would never use overpriced Connect.
For this use-case, Zapier is so much better with even a free tier.
Hopefully Connect won’t be around much longer and maybe just maybe they’ll start on FileMaker again (after several product renamings, of course).
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When Claris says "nuanced" they are not wrong. Licensing has been an ongoing source of confusion for years now, and the permutations and use case scenarios complicate things even more.
Note: very little of the licensing is technologically enforced; it is almost all based on an honor system.
- Per seat license
- Concurrent license (~3x normal license, but allows a single account 3 concurrent accesses legally. Technically a user can log in as many times as they want, but each connection consumes a license, including WebD and FMGo
=============== - Annual
- Perpetual (~3x annual)
- Perpetual with maintenance
FMS 5 user license is 5 concurrent connected users of the same license code, regardless of connection path. FMGo and WebDirect don't have a license, but consume a connection regardless.
However, FMP licenses that are NOT the same license code, can connect without consuming a FMS license.
A site license (25 concurrent connections min, based not on users, but on employee head count) allows unlimited Web Direct and FM Go connections, and up to the site license count of FileMaker connections and FMS instances, using that license code. Outside FMP licenses, again, do not consume a seat on the server's site license.
For a site license, the recommended max connections are 200 WebD users per server and up to 10 ancillary servers, so 2000 web direct concurrent connections - due to the load that a web based service imports on a server.
FMGo is lightweight - a few thousand FMGo users is not a stretch.
The other option is Studio - which, with the new bundling - can be cost effective and useful in some cases. The web based access is through a MONGO Claris - hosted db with virtually unlimited concurrent connections. Still a bit immature and messy, but has a valid use case.
You may add that there are pricing tears and a higher level has a lower per seat cost. So 25 seats can cost 4700.00 Euro, but 24 seats may cost 5283.60 Euro. Which means anywhere from 21 to 25, you pick 25.
Also always check site license as a site license may be cheaper than a regular site license, if you have 15 or more people using FileMaker and not too many other employees.
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@Kirk ,
you did an incredible job explaining licensing in a few paragraphs. You should propose your services to Claris !
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None of their licensing "packages" really fit me and my company. Also, a concurrent license is yet another +3X from Perpetual. Ridiculous.
From a technical standpoint, I think FMS is a superb product. I love using it. Very well thought out and intuitive. But due to the severely strict licensing terms, and pricing 'model', I can't recommend it for our current or known future projects.
IMHO, Claris marketing has ruined FMS. It seems to me to be destined as another niche product to be used by only the truest of the FMP faithful for the tiny carve out in their onerous terms and conditions.
We're instead using the totally free MariaDB as an extremely fast back-end. Yes, we need to do the UI ourselves, but in this case, we don't have Claris (or others) in our knickers always trying to extract more money or hoist onerous licensing terms on us.
Yes, I still use FMS, but only for a little testing. I'm afraid to use it otherwise....People are still confused what a user is after years and years. Again, ridiculous.
-- O
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Here is another option you might find very cost effective. No licensing restrictions and still have FMS in the back end
Another option is LiveCode FM, although you may find the licensing $$ not to your liking, but you gain Android deployment in the mix.
https://filemaker.livecode.com
And LiveCode (not the FileMaker integrated version) is a very rapid time-to-value development environment, providing a single UI deployment across Win/Mac/Linux/Web/iOS/Android and a number of execution options. NOT FileMaker, however, and a unique language (descendant of Apple's HyperText, but with massively more capabilities).
KLM wrote their airline reservation system with LiveCode.
About half way down this page, is a code comparison between LIVECODE and 3 other major programming languages. Pretty compelling argument, and no licensing fees beyond the developer license environment.
The latest macOS version supported by LiveCode is El Capitan (10.11), according to their documentation.
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You are comparing a free product, MariaDB in this instance, to FileMaker. FileMaker will never win in these conditions. If you are looking for free products or cheap products, that's Ok. These are your needs and decisions.
If you want to compare FileMaker, then you should compare with paid for products like MS SQL Server, Postgres or Oracle - not their community editions.
EDITS
Typos corrected