michael3785

Hi Nick Many thanks for your explanation. That worked perfectly I copied the smaller tab control from the other layout over to my working one and created a new style based on it. Thanks very much Michael

I have avery big solution that was built in FM7 originally and it needs a UI overhaul. So, no themes are as good as they are I am rolling up my sleeves and putting together a reference design. have been looking around at design templates to lift (speaking frankly) and I like the FM Starting Point design. However there are a few things I need to tweak that I can't readily see how to do it in Inspector. The main one is the height of the tabs in the tab controls. They are too high for my layouts. As far I can see I either have to hack the CSS somehow or I have to use a conditional fomatting workaround, set the text size really small to reduce the height of the tab, then conditional format the text back up to the correct size, which is a bit yuck, seeing as I have lots of tabs. Any advice much appreciated. Many thanks.

Hi all, Just some observations on this that may interest those still wrestling this. We are using FMS12v3 Advanced Server on Windows with 2 servers (DB + PHP/WPE) First off, we got trapped on a 32-bit VM for the web server due to plug-in compatibility issues. This in itself caused us big problems when the server was busy. The WPE process was constantly maxing out memory as it could only address 2GB. We finally fixed that and after a very painful process of deploying FMS12 onto a new 64-bit web server (which took about 10 attempts and some messing around with bindings and PHP settings) we hit a new problem with performance. After a while we realised that we had made a big mistake and put a calculated field on the home page layout (i.e. the first layout that the CWP code used to get important details on the client). This did not just slow down the user trying to log in, it made every other WPE user pretty much stop. We started watching the Admin stats on the main Filemaker server console and could see that, at login, the WPC client was generating something like 8000 remote calls. The WPE basically never got past this. You could wait pretty much forever and the login just did not complete and the WPC calls stayed nailed up there. The calc in question field was looking at what the client logging in currently owed us in outstanding invoices, and some of our clients have 100s of invoices, so the calc was particularly hard for our biggest accounts. After putting 2 and 2 together and realising that this field was causing the problem, we took it off the layout and instantly the logins worked again. The WPC remote calls count would not exceed 50. We found some other processes that caused issues. If we had a layout that CWP was using and that layout had lots of data from related tables on it, again, the WPC remote calls would rocket, so we had to clear up those layouts and go get the related data another way via native layouts. We found that calling lots of records, even those with all native table fields of course caused the WPC call count to go high and performance to completely nose dive. The most important thing though was that the performance when the WPC remote call count goes high is just completely non-linear. At some point the server would get past a sustainable remote call count and just die and never come back. The only way to fix it was to turn off the web services from the FMS console. Note, restarting services on the web server itself did not clear the WPC remote calls! Filemaker Server had to do it from the console. Also, interesting was that, in most cases, even when Filemaker Pro clients where connected and doing something horrible to the server (like a massive replace operation, or rendering lots of summarised data) the remote call count on that client (say 10000 or more) would not really impact the WPE performance. The only thing that we suspect can interfere is an import from Excel or CSV but that is a suspicion and we are going to test it again now we have removed the suicidal calc fields from the CWP layouts. What is a shame is that Filemaker Server can't handle these things gracefully. Unstored calcs and related fields can just kill the server stone dead. It a pretty big issue to workaround, but our findings so far are that so long as you steer clear of these, run on a 64-bit server with 4GB+ of RAM and at least 2 vCPUs, then you should see reasonably reliable performance. Michael

Hi again After noticing that this process still worked on a couple of PC's I found that the ones that were working were still using v1.57 of the plugin. I installed this on my PC and the process started working again. @360Works, any idea why this should be the case? Thanks Michael

Hi I am having the exact same problem. This process was working absolutely fne until recently. We have not changed our code in FM and we have not changed anything on the web site that we are logging into. I am guessing it is something to do with yet another Java update. I have tried installing Java SE 7 update 40 but then the WebAssistant plugin complains I am not running Java when FM starts up... @360Works, any ideas guys? We have a number of customer-facing processes that use this function and they are all broken right now. If you PM me I can give you a URL, username password and (previously working) FM code to test with. Thanks Michael BTW we used to use TroiURL for this process. I have tested the odl code and it works fine which confirms that our code is good and the site is behaving normally. Also, just to describe the symptom better, we set up the login WASetInputValue, then call the login page with WAGetURL. All we get back is the HTML for the login page - no failed login - no attempt to submit the login form on the page. Thanks Michael

Many thanks Mr Vodka. I was starting to get a bit worried about this behaviour. Having discovered ExecuteSQL I was all up for chucking out 80% of my TOs, then hit this snag as all my key fields (local and foreign) have underscores. Problem solved albeit making the expressions a bit more complex than ideal. Anyway, thanks for the very useful post. MIchael

Hi Ian The way that Filemaker is put together does not support this in any simple way but there are less simple ways that you can use if the use case fits. A layout will always be achored to a table occurance in your graph so when you place fields on the layout you are placing fields from that TO or from related TOs. Now if you want to show another whole set of records, you are going to need to use a portal. However this is going to show you related records to your base TO. You don't independant access to another table altogether. There arte something syou can do to pretend like you do have an independant second table though. The thing I do in these cases, is have a "cartesian" (i.e. "match all records") relationship to another table. This is the X relationship comparator in the graph. You can use any indexed field you like on either side of the relationship, but I like to use key fields as I know they will never be calculated or anything unsuitable. So now you have a relationship from you base TO to all records in the second table. You can now create a portal to that related TO that will show you all records in that second table. If you want to control the found set in the portal in a way that is essentially nothing to do with teh base TO (which btw I am assuming is your form part of the layout), then there are 2 ways to do this, 2 variations on the same theme. First you need to create script to make a list of all the keys in the second table for the records you want to show. Finds on indexed fields in FM are quick so pop a window off screen find the records you want, freeze window and loop through to get your list of keys. Sounds clumsy but its pretty quick with a relatively small data set. Now come your options. 1. filter the portal based on the key field in the record being present in your list (use patterncount for this), OR your key list being empty (in which case you probably want to show everything). If the key is found in your list, the record will appear, otherwise not. or, 2 create a global field in your basse table and put the key value list in there, then change your relationship from cartesian to one where you match the key on the second TO with the global in your base TO. 1 is potentially slower as filtered portals load all the related data befdore they filter it. 2. performs quicker but requires you to add stuff to the schema and also means that unless you generate a key list and put something in your global you will not see anything at all in the portal. There are various other techniques around this script triggers on "find" fields, sorting, etc, but this is a general approach to get you going. It is not trivial but it may well get you where you want to go. M

Genx, thanks for your comments on this issue. It is one affecting me. I wondered if you had any more thoughts on the underlying XML performance of the Filemaker server. I have actually just posted this topic http://fmforums.com/forum/topic/81518-optimise-xml-performance-for-web-services-manager-and-php/ in the 360works sub-forum as I think my performance problems with using the PHP API and 360works product (which has its own PHP file and addresses the Filemaker server via XML directly) are both to do with the XML performance on the Filemaker server. Both are going realy slow, especially when related data is evaluated in scripts or called for display to the user. Is there anything I should know about configuration to get the most out of the XML engine or I am I stuck? Right now even simple finds on indexed fields take 3-5 seconds and using the Web Services Manager WSDL is painfully slow, whereas IWP returns complex finds on multiple fields almost instantly. I is soo frustrating! Any help would be much appreciated.

We are using Web Services Manager to provide access to customers for certain functions in our database. We have up til recently been using IWP as well, but are in the process of switching to CWP using PHP. However performance problems are now putting both at risk. Our config is as follows: Database Server: Intel i7 QC 2.4Ghz, 4GB RAM, Win Server 2008 R2, SSD drives in RAID1, FMS11v3 Advanced Web Server: Xeon 2.4Ghz, 3GB RAM, Win Server 2003, RAID10 SATA drives, FMS11v3 Advanced, PHP 5.3 with FastCGI Looking at performance of the new PHP site we are developing we have noticed that it suffers from a problem we have long experienced with Web Services Manager which is just how slow the Filemaker server XML engine is. It takes 15+ seconds to return the Web Services Manager wsdl XML and even simple queries on indexed fields via the PHP interface take 5-10 seconds when in IWP and using the Filemaker Pro client, the same query returns almost instantly. We have done a suggested fix on the config file for thr Filemaker PHP to use 127.0.0.1 instead of references to localhost and this has maybe made a small difference in performance. As per the spec above we already swicthed from the Filemaker-installed PHP version to our own with FastCGI and that did nothing. So it all points to the slow performance of the XML engine that is actually returning data to the Filemaker API and the Web Services Manager PHP script. Does anyone have any experience of this and how to improve the XML performance of the Filemaker server. It is really depressing that so much is possible using this interface but right now, we cannot practically use it as users will not tolerate the porr performance... All comments much appreciated. Thanks. Michael

Bump

Hi Sterling I have not heard from you yet and I have clients experiencing problems with a number of bugs that I know have been fixed since my old version. I really need to upgrade ASAP. Please could you take a look at the file I uploaded a while back and get back to me. Many thanks Michael

Hi Sterling. I was wondering whether you had had chance to look at this issue based on the files I uploaded the other day? Many thanks Michael

I have been using Web Services Manager for a long time successfully but as the number of users has grown, I have started getting reports of bugs so I thought it was time to update. I downloaded the new version (1.5) and followed the import instructions but the import from my live version is not working upfortunately. Here is the config. Server: Windows Server 2008 R2, Filemaker Server 11v1 Web Server: Windows Server 2003 R2, Filemaker Server 11v1 Currently running: Web Services Manager 1.1 New version: Web Services Manager 1.5 I have attached some screenshots of the update process. Any advice would be much appreciated. I know if I try to re-create the settings I will make mistakes and it will be very time-consuming. Many thanks Michael Capture.zip

I have a simple problem with how Web Services Manager is returning data in time fields via XML. If I have a field (t_Time) in my layout that has the time 15:02:17, Web Services Manager (tested using the SOAP client) returns the field formatted as follows: 03:02:17 It therefore looks like 3 in the morning rather than 3 in the afternoon. I would prefer that this was in 24-hour format, but AM or PM would be start. I have checked the formatting on my layout and this is correct. I suspect that is not involved though. Any thoughts on how this can be fixed? Thanks Michael

I am trying to make some charts to show revenue by client over the last year or so. In principle, I have a working solution with the relevant summary fields, layouts, etc. The problem is that I have a lot of data and the way I was doing this is not working any more - it just takes too long. In the last year I have about 60,000 invoice records and 2000 client records. I am trying to show revenue and profit for these clients based on totals from their related invoices. I have a layout to show all this data but basically I need to filter out data for a load of the clients who are less important. Ideally, I want to be able to show the data by client for all clients who represent 1% or more of renevue (probably about 30 or so) and just put the rest into an "Other" column. My previous solution used old charting techniques using flash files, etc. I would generate the data values by literally looping through all the invoices, using GetSummary (breaking on the client id, each time I got to a new client in the list of invoices I would get the summary and carry on) to get the data I needed and as soon as the GetSummary value was below 1% of the total, I could just put the rest of the data into the Other column. I would now like to get to something similar using the new FM11 charting function. I have the chart working fine but of course with 2000 clients, it is a bit useless as you don't see any meaningful content in the chart as it is so bunched up along the X-axis. I was thinking maybe to exclude Invoices that belonged to a client that was in the less-than-1% category as a start, but you can do a find based on a calculated GetSummary field. The GetSummary data seems to disappear when you execute a find (not suprisingly I guess). Any suggestions on how I could make some progress on this type of problem (ideally without a loop through my invoices in there!) would be much appreciated. Many thanks Michael

Hi there All fixed now. At first, I tried updating Java using the Java updater tool. That took it from Java 6 update 19 to j6u20. Still no luck at that point. I then manually re-downloaded Java from the Sun site and installed it again. After doing this FM started loading normally and is running WebAssistant fine. Thanks Michael

I am running Filemaker Pro 11 and Advanced 11 on a Windows 2008 terminal server with the WebAssistant plug-in. Unfortunately, after the latest round of Microsoft updates (maybe co-incidentally), Filemaker will not start with the WebAssistant plugin installed. If I remove the extension FM starts fine. I have just updated to the latest version of the plugin (1.511) but this has not helped. I have tried uninstalling all the Windows updates that were installed yesterday and that has not helped. There are however a bunch of Office updates including Office 2007 SP2 that I have not taken off yet but am really hoping I won't need to as I need some of these updates for the functionality they have. Has anyone else seen similar problems and is there a workaround? Thanks Michael

Hi all Many thanks for your help on this. I went with the split key option and this work great. BTW, I am not generating the keys - they are from Outlook using the Productive Outlook Maniplulator plug-in so I don't get to choose the key length. I thought about converting the hex values to decimals but I thought this might allow for collisions where record A was "01234A" and record B was "012341". If I was using a A->1, B->2, type conversion scheme, record A would go to "012341" and collide with record B. I should add, that I tried a workaround in the scripting to use a find on the key field rather than a relationship with it, but putting quotes around the key value when finding made the find take 3-4 seconds (I am searching a table with 200,000 records) so it would not have been scalable for batch scripting. The relation look-up is almost instant so works better for me. Anyway, thanks again for your input. All sorted Michael

Hi guys Found this post interesting as I am having a similar problem but mine does not involve any punctuation. A find for 00000000533006B9BD99CC4D8B1F70AF9DA7783B0700A5B4F3D8CC2B3C4FA1DB76709804EC44000000001BA00000A5B4F3D8CC2B3C4FA1DB76709804EC4400000041D2610000 finds things like 00000000533006B9BD99CC4D8B1F70AF9DA7783B0700A5B4F3D8CC2B3C4FA1DB76709804EC44000000001BA00000A5B4F3D8CC2B3C4FA1DB76709804EC4400000000425B0000 and 00000000533006B9BD99CC4D8B1F70AF9DA7783B0700A5B4F3D8CC2B3C4FA1DB76709804EC44000000001BA00000A5B4F3D8CC2B3C4FA1DB76709804EC4400000041D08C0000 (There are no carriage returns in the actual values) I can make the find work properly by putting a quote at each end of the search string, but this does not address my application as I am actually trying to make a relationship between records using this data and the relationship is matching records with the wrong key on the "right" of the relationship. Are the 0's doing something maybe? Any input much appreciated. Many thanks Michael

You can get what you want here by using a plugin like ZippScript and editing the delete privileges for the records in the table. If you put an expression in the delete privileges calculation and this expression calls a ZippScript "PerformScript" function then the script will run when the user tries to delete the record as the expression must be evaluated before Filemaker knows if it can go ahead and delete the record. You can also then use the result of the function you have called as part of the expression to return 1 or 0 to determine if the delete gets a allowed or not.

Hey Tissot. Great work! I was having the exact same problem and this has fixed it for me. Many thanks for supporting the community. Michael

SOAP-ENV:Client Welcome to the 360Works Web Services Manager.Click here to view a Web Service Description Language (wsdl) file describing enabled operations and services. For additional product support, please refer to the documentation located in the Getting Started section of the Web Services Manager.fp7 file, or check out the 360Works Product Forum.

I have made some progress with the help of a colleague. I noticed that if cURL calls the URL without "wsdl&" after "websvcmgr.php?" just leaving service= at the end, it seems to work as expected. Anyone know why this might be the case?

I have set up Web Services Manager and it looks like it is working fine from my testing. I am using your SOAP client to test it and looks like I can send and receive data fine. I have a client tha is using PHP and CURL tro send and receive data and they are having a problem. The CURL process just returns the WSDL itself. It is not successfully submitting the sent XML data or calling the script behind the web service. Is there any additional testing they should do or settings they need to specify when using CURL? Thanks Michael

Hi there I am having an annoying problem with 360Works Web Assistant on Windows Vista. I just got it and think it is a great plug-in but unless I run Filemaker Pro 10 as admin in compatibility mode, Filemaker complains that java is not installed (though it is) and the plugin is not active. Running as admin in compatibility mode, Filemaker and the plugin work as expected. Is there a fix for this? I would prefer not to have the app running in this mode. Many thanks Michael