Can FileMaker Handle Your Database Needs?

Short answer: Yes, 90% of the time.

Here are some items based on FileMaker's Knowledgebase article Technical specifications of FileMaker Pro 11 and FileMaker Pro 11 Advanced:

File size: Limited only by disk space, to a maximum of 8 TB (terabytes) on a hard disk and OS API capability.

Number of tables per file: 1 million.

Number of records per table: 64 quadrillion total records over life time of file.

Maximum record size: Limited by disk space or maximum file size.

Number of fields/columns per record: 256 million total fields over life time of file.

Number of relationships per file: Limited only by disk space or maximum file size.

Length of field name: Up to 100 characters.

Maximum field size, by type:

• Text: Up to 1 billion characters per field per repetition (limited by available memory) with optional text style runs and paragraph runs. Index is based on the first 100 characters of each word or value.
• Number: Support values from 10^-400 up to 10^400 and the negative values of the same range. Index based on the first 400 significant digits. Up to 1 billion characters per field. The first 400 digits are indexed.
• Date: Gregorian calendar with the range of 1/1/0001...12/31/4000. Month, day, year order based on system settings when file is created.
• Container: Multiple streams of binary data totaling no more then 4 gigabytes per container field.

Size of calculation formula: Maximum of 30,000 characters, including text and numbers, any referenced fields, operators, functions and parentheses.

Number of layouts per file: Limited by disk space or maximum file size.

Layout size: Up to 110 inches wide by 110 inches long; may be limited by currently selected printer and page setup. Objects beyond current page width do not print.

Number of layout objects: Maximum of 32,768 objects on each layout.

Number of scripts: Limited by disk space. Displayed in Scripts menu: 512 on Windows, 32,767 on Mac OS.

Number of columns across the page: Up to 99 columns.

Number of labels across the page: Up to 99 labels.

You're bound to hit the limits of your Operating System or hardware before you reach the technical limits of FileMaker Pro. Your databases can easily have hundreds of fields and millions of records in a number of tables. Of course, if your requirements run into billions of records and millions of users accessing at the same time, you're probably in the 10% group that FileMaker can't handle. For most usage scenarios though, with a well-designed database, FileMaker should be able to cope.