Batfastad

Ok I've actually solved this without filemaker and found a great PHP function to do the hard work here... http://www.devscripts.net/browse/116.php Hope this helps someone else out

Hi everyone I've not been on here for a while... used to be a regular in the FileMaker 4-6 days. Apologies if this is not the correct section to post in, this question relates to FileMaker 5/6 calculation fields. Anyway, the time is coming to start porting a few of our simple databases over to MySQL. At the moment we have a hybrid solution running over our intranet using PHP and FX.php to access filemaker data, and MySQL for some of the other databases. There are a few databases in our solution that simply store vast numbers of records, and loading them through FX.php is not very efficient so I was going to get those simple databases copied over. My particular problem with doing this is the date/times of record creation. When I export the data, I have a PHP script which basically loops through the records output using FX.php, and prints them as an HTML page in the following format: INSERT INTO `notes` VALUES('','$company_id',$time_now,'$user_name',$material,$notes,$mag,$type,$where_who); So then I just copy and paste all those SQL insert commands into phpMyAdmin Another upside of outputting as HTML rather than text is that FireFox / IE automatically converts all the entities created by FileMaker's XML export into their proper characters for storing in MySQL. This worked well for some other databases I did a while back, but I've spotted a problem with my handling of dates/times. I have a filemaker calculation field which is supposed to take my filemaker record creation date and creation time fields and convert them into a UNIX timestamp. But I've noticed a problem with this calculation as it doesn't return correct values when BST (GMT +1) is operation... it gives the times an hour forward. So I decided to convert to a timestamp using PHP and the mktime function: http://uk2.php.net/manual/en/function.mktime.php Should be easy! But to do it this way I need a filemaker calculation field function that can tell me if a certain date/time is in GMT or BST. Then I can pass either a 0 or a 1 to the is_dst parameter of the PHP mktime() function Leaving it up to PHP to work out automatically whether the date is GMT or BST can produce very unpredictable results. Does anyone know of a way within a FileMaker calculation field to detect if a particular date is GMT or observing Daylight Savings Time? All the date/times in our databases are between 1999 and 2007 The only way I can think of doing this is setting up a database containing all of these dates http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_summer_time#Start_and_end_dates_of_British_and_Irish_Summer_Time ... and comparing the value to see whether it's in any of those ranges. Just wondered if anyone knew a better way? Thanks Ben

Hi guys I've been developing an intranet interface with FX.php for a client's filemaker system. Work is going well, and the system is looking great. This also greatly improves their external access to their database as no more remote desktop, whilst still having FileMaker Server for data storage. I was wondering what options there are for exporting FileMaker 5.5/6 to a remote MySQL table?? I've tried exporting a CSV, then messing around with the data and adding SQL INSERT instructions to each line - and it works. Sort of. Somehow managed to get about 2,000 extra records in my SQL table. Also had to split my CSV into several parts. There's a few things I can do, like setting up a unique delimiter field in the filemaker db, and converting all filemaker linebreaks to newline chars. But it's time consuming. Are there any tools to export to SQL directly from filemaker? I have FileMaker 7 and 8 for personal use but have not used them extensively - are there any MySQL export options in there? Are there any tips / advice you could give me? Thanks Ben

Cool, thanks Will stick with filemaker 5.x/6 for a while yet though.

Hi guys We use FM5.5/6 at the moment Quick question about the FM8 file format, is it the same format as FM7? Glad I didn't bother upgrading to 7 now this has been released : Thanks Ben

We are setting up a US office in addition to our UK office, and we are looking at various methods of linking the two - in particular accessing our email and database systems. We use filemaker server 5.5 - We have all the users in the US office using remote desktop to connect to our systems OR - We set up a VPN so users can use outlook through our VPN What sort of performance would you get, using filemaker over a VPN? What sort of connection speed would we need? What VPN software would I need? Another option is to create a web interface for the database using filemaker unlimited. Any ideas? Thanks Ben

A little OT but I stumbled across a pretty cool site just now. Called the uptime-project which compares the uptime of servers across the world. My filemaker server's currently at about 132 days. http://www.uptime-project.net I've created a special private league on there for users of filemaker server products. I use filemaker server 5.5 on windows 2000. If you want to join my filemaker uptime league then goto the link above Register Then go to http://filemaker-servers.league.uptime-project.net/ and you can join the private filemaker server league. You'll need this password: filemakerisawesome Thanks Ben

Ok I have a database called company which stores information about the companies we deal with. I already have certain sections of our database shared onto the internet, but not this company information file. The way I've always done this is to use the PHP include() function... include("http://web.domain.org:591/FMPro?-DB..."); I use the web security db, and I have filemaker unlimited 5 (not 5.5 or 6) running on a windows box. In the web security db this database has browse permissions. Could someone download all my data? I've written CDML code in all my format files so that only the IP address of the php server performing the include can access... [FMP-If: ClientIP .eq. 123.456.789.012] more cdml code here [/FMP-If] 1) I heard there was a vulnerability in the XML support in later versions of the web companin which could allow people to gain access to the data. Is this the case with FMU 5? Most of the security of doing this lies in the fact that people won't know we use filemaker, as there's no trace in our source code. 2) Are there any other steps I can take to ensure that people can't get at data I don't want them to? 3) In my web security db, I've set all users permissions to browse. So in theory if someone knew the location of our filemaker web server, they could construct a CDML query to return all the data. Though we have no format files that would let them do that as they're all restricted by IP address - is there a way they could get round this? Say for example I have 'all users' set to 'browse' for this database in the web security db. 4) If there are no CDML format files in the Web directory, can they still access the data? Surely if there are no format files, they can't. 5) So the same should be true if I test the ip address on the format files, and only allow he ip address of our ISPs web server? I could add username/password security to my web security database. Then in my PHP include I do this: include("http://username:password@fmp.domain.com:591/FMPro?-DB=.."); And only allow browse permissions for that username/password combination. 6) Would this add an extra level of security? 7) I assume there's no way for people to try and get at my username and password if it's stored in my PHP source code? Otherwise I guess people would be able to get hold of MySQL usernames and passwords which are usually held in the PHP source code. As far as I can think of, implementing all those steps ensures that cdml queries can only be run from our ISPs web server, and only if they know the username/password. Anything else I could do? Thanks Ben

Ok I've solved it in a rather crude way, but it works. I search for &-Op=bw&COMPANY NAME=0*...9* and it returns all COMPANY NAME with a number in. Then I check the value of company name to see if it is less than or equal to 9 on the CDML format page. If it's greater than 9, then it's not a number and I don't show anything. Seems to be working. Thanks for your suggestions guys. Ben

Unfortunately when I try writing a script to do that it doesn't work. It doesn't work as a CDML query either... &-Op=bw&COMPANY NAME=0*...9* I don't really want to have to create another field in our database just for this. It's overrun with fields like that already. I might just set it up as 10 find requests - means it will be a massive CDML string.

The result of ==0...9* was 'no records found' That's the one that I thought should work. I've just tried ==0*...9* and I get 'no records found' When I try just 0*...9* I get all records returned containing a number in that field.

Hi guys I'm having trouble structuring a find request. I'm trying to return companies from our database where the first character is a number. I don't want to do 10 individual find requests so I thought of trying to use the ... range find symbol. Doing 0...9 returns companies where there's a number from 0-9 in the field somewhere. I've tried doing ==0...9* to try and return the companies where the first character of that field is a number, but with no luck. I'll also need to try and structure this find in CDML syntax as well. Any ideas on how to do this? Thanks Ben

Yeah I've got a loop sorted to omit the duplicates, it's working well so far!!

Hi guys, Thanks for all your help!! I've now got a loop to do exactly what I need. Performance isn't too bad either, when looping through 30,000 records. Thanks Ben

I was wondering whether there was a way to do it without looping through all the records. Obviously not. Ah well. Thanks for the tips!

So a way to search and have each different value showing, but without any of the duplicates of the values. I then need to loop through the values so this needs to be a find of some sort. Thanks Ben

I've got a database with a field called number, which holds a number. There are 20,000 or so records. If I want to find the duplicates I just search using the exclamation mark find symbol. No problem! Is there a way to search to keep one duplicated record, and omit the other duplicates? Say I have 4 records with a number 365 in. When I search for ! it returns all 4 of those records. Is there a way for it to return just 3 of those records, leaving one of those in with the rest of the records?? Thanks Ben

Is there any way to prevent the ability for users to resize filemaker windows in my solution? On mac mainly, but on windows as well. I have the secure fm plugin from new millennium which lets me disable the file minimise/maximise and close buttons. Is there a way to stop the resizing? Either with/without a plugin? Basically so that the solution I'm working on at the moment can only be either minimised or maximised. It annoys me when I see people who've resized the window to a tiny quarter so that they can't see the whole layout. Any ideas? Thanks Ben

Didn't know you could only attach 1 file The PDF is attached on the previous message. This one has the layout mode screen grab Any ideas? Thanks Batfastad

Hi We use FileMaker 5.5 and 6 I've noticed this problem before and it's really irritating! When designing a layout that I intend to use for print purposes I align all the fields and their labels so they look fine in layout/browse/preview mode. The layout consists of a logo, field labels and merge fields. The field labels and the merge fields are different fonts and different sizes. Then in this case I'm using Adobe acrobat to print to a PDF file. When I print to the PDF the merge fields are not lined up correctly with their field labels. The same happens when I print the layout directly from preview mode, so that eliminates the problem being PDF related. It is filemaker related. It's so annoying as the layout is all lined up fine in preview mode, but when printed to anything - PDF or a printer, the merge fields no longer match up with their field labels. I've attached two files... A screen grab of my layout mode, and the resulting PDF. Any ideas on how to solve this problem? Surely this is a fairly major issue - it happens in both FMP 5.5 and FMP 6 on windows. Thanks Batfastad page1.pdf

You might also want to have a look at a way of throttling your internet connection to guarantee bandwidth to the remote desktop ports. So that remote users don't get disconnects/slowdowns if someone's downloading a large file from the internet, on the lan side of the network. Your modem/router might have features built in to perform bandwidth management/qos features. We use a Zyxel zywall 10w. Not for any firewall features but purely for the bandwidth management. It just sits between our lan and our adsl modem and limits the bandwidth of various services. I found that if our exchange server was downloading a particularly large email, our external remote desktop access pretty much ground to a halt. HTH (again) Batfastad

Just to clarify: Microsoft terminal services and remote desktop connection are the same thing. They use the same protocol (I think - or i've been wrong for many years) And I would say the spec of the dell is just about fine to have 4 concurrent users. However to have 4 copies of filemaker running on terminal services at the same time, you need a volume license (VLA) - well that is the case with filemaker 5/6 anyway. Otherwise you can only have one filemaker user logged on through terminal services at a time - I assume it's the same with filemaker 7. HTH Batfastad

We have a small office in the states and several users there use terminal services to connect to various terminal servers at our main office in the UK. We found the latency of the connection to be the main problem. Hardly surprising when you consider how many servers the vector data has to pass through. Performance of terminal services is way above using VNC though. As obviously VNC will be sending bitmap data to the client, whereas terminal services uses vector data and api calls to render the information on the client screen. To improve the latency issue I am thinking of an upgrade to SDSL - 1mbps upload and 1mbps download. Whether that will improve matters I don't know. Though I already have a bandwidth throttling system enabled on our ADSL connection which guarantees terminal services 80kbps of our 256kbps upload. Terminal services is the way to go as far as I'm concerned. Really easy to set up as well. Definitely devote a dedicated machine to terminal services if possible. Although I've heard citrix mentioned on here with regards to remote access of filemaker databases, but I don't really know what it is. It is another option to terminal services though I think. A final option would be to go web-based! Using PHP and CDML you could develop a web-based solution for remote users to use. You can fully control it using password protection etc to stop other people gaining access to your data. Will be harder work to set up than terminal services, but would be cheaper - cheaper than a volume license. All you need is a copy of filemaker server advanced or filemaker unlimited (if you're still on 5.x/6). Also a dedicated machine for serving the web requests doesn't have to be as powerful as one that needs to run 4 or more terminal services sessions. And is therefore cheaper. An advantage of using the CDML and PHP web-based approach is that you can code an HTML version but also a WML version so that you can search your filemaker database from a wap/gprs enabled mobile phone. Something that I managed to do with great success for an order tracking system and for a remote contact search system. All the suggestions above need a permanent connection to the internet, and ideally with a static ip address. Though as mentioned by boley above there are plenty of DNS forwarding services out there if your ISP doesn't give you a static ip. Just a couple of ideas there. HTH Batfastad

Excellent Thanks for all your help guys

Aha I get it now. Thanks for all your help guys.