Hi!

I am developing a VB application that puts data into filemaker. I have encountered a problem that I believe is a FM ODBC driver bug. Hopefully someone else will know about this and be able to provide me with a solution. This is the problem:

When I try to install a value into a FM text field, and the value is longer than 255 chars, the string gets chopped off, taking away everything after the first 255 chars.

I run filemaker 5, but I have installed the 5.5 ODB drivers since the 5 one was so buggy.

In great need of a solution for this! Thanks /Jonas

Yet Another FileMaker ODBC Problem (YAFMOP)...

In CDML it will be couple of lines of code with length limitation around 20-64KB.

You picked your tools with build-in limitations.

Such job is running smoothly every day on our server with all Press Releases from whole ICT market purely done in CDML/FMU combo.

What is CDML?

It might be right that another solution would be better, but at the stage I am now, it would be too much work to redesign it all. One "ugly" solution that I could do is to install the 255 first chars initially, and after that just update the field with the next 255 chars and so on until the whole string is stored. This sounds like a bad overcomplicated solution though.

It must be some way of getting around the problem with the 255 char problem. In the FM manuals it says that it can handle over 60.000 chars, but it seems that the problem lies in that FM have really crappy ODBC support.

Anybody else that have ben stuck with this problem too?

/Jonas

This is not a bug.. It's even documented option for ODBC connections...

Look at odcb panel and there on FM odcb, advanced , max text lenght = 255

change that to as big as you want (I do not know the max value..)

If you are using ODBC to some sort of solution you can allso use filemaker XML to retrive data to you solution. (or to VB solution) xml is much faster than filemaker own ODBC. Alltought filemakers xml is prety tricky to use....

CDML is prety limited net programming language for Filemaker...

Jonas,

I ran into this, here is how I solved it.

First off, the SQL querry I use is a text field. (or a global text depending on situation)

The text field is populated using a 'set field' script step.

The querry is the calculation part of the set field.

I ususally write the querry by hand, (in my case in MSQuerryTool in MSSQL Enterprize manager). Paste it into the calc field enclosed in quotes, change all the fields nessicarry to field calls from my FM database.

Then I discovered when running the querry in FM the 250 char limit.

So what I did, is change the text parts of the set field shorter.

Example,

"select " & [your field here] & " from databases..... where "& [your field]&" = "&[your date calc]&"""

whould become something like

"select " & [your field here] & " from " & " databases....." & "Where"& [your field]&" = "&[your date calc]&"""

this worked for me.