Whether you're a hobbyist developer or a full-time professional, it's important to make sure your development environment is both stable and reliable. Unless you're in the process of learning a new environment, not that many developers are keen to spending a bunch of time re-configuring their development environment.

The worst feeling in the world, while developing, is one of instability. Having that looming fear that your application or file may crash at any time is not a happy place. It's like you're constantly looking over your shoulder waiting for the next FileMaker crash. For FileMaker development, the solution to this problem is to always develop using FileMaker Server.

When FileMaker Server is within your development environment it provides crash protection, automated backups and other learning benefits which you simply won't get if you only upload your FileMaker file to a host and simply work that way. If you're still developing locally with just a copy of FileMaker Pro Advanced then this video should be especially appealing.

Also, if you're a developer on-the-go and you can't be tied to a local network, and may not have WAN access, then running a local FileMaker Server is a great solution. One possible issue is that FileMaker Server has be structured for a production environment and not for a development. You can, however, with a few setup changes, make your local development machine use FileMaker Server in order to facilitate the ideal development environment.

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