Software Workgroup Configuration

[flowe]

Hey Guys,

I hope this is a no-brainer(Yeah, duh.) but I need some reassurance. I have a software workgroup configuration in which I am sharing 5 files. My question is....

Question: While hosting these files on the "hosting" machine in this software workgroup can you pull/copy data from the "client" machine into a local file without affecting the sharing performance of the workgroup?

Reason: I have 200 files that generate 200 worksheets to be used for note taking only and do NOT affect any data in the host files.

Thanks for your help.

Sincerely,

flowe

[Anatoli]

IMHO yes with FM server, not when FM client is the server/host.

[flowe]

From the original question:

I wanted to make clear that the client machine is pulling data to into a local file on the client machine. Is the client machine now hosting that file and therefore brings the number of files from 5 to 6 in the workgroup?

Does this mean when I have 6 client computers sharing the original 5 files and I want to copy data to a file on the client's local drive the total number of files increases by one for each client machine file? Is this truely affecting the sharing of the original 5 files? Can I use local files on client machines without sharing them with the rest of the workgroup? Please comment.

Thanks,

flowe

[Kurt Knippel]

So you have a "peer-to-peer" network, and you are sharing 5 databases with Filemaker Pro? You are asking if you are on one of the guest machines and you export the data to a local file, if this will affect the performance of the workgroup as a whole?

No this will have no effect, although what could happen is that if you have files named the same opened on multiple workstations, they could start linking together and you will get messed up data.

For example lets say that you have files called Client.fp5, Company.fp5, Contact.fp5, Invoice.fp5 and LineItem.fp5 open on the host machine. Guest1 connects and exports the data from Contact.fp5 to a new local db called Contact.fp5 and opens it starting to do some editing for thier own purposes. Now there are 2 seperate copies of Contact.fp5 open on the workgroup and other guest connecting may open one or the other. This can lead to confusing data entry and may end up screwing up your data.

If the files are named differently (like EdmundsContacts.fp5) then you should not have the problems.