My organization would like to access our FM database via the internet. It's currently hosted internally with FM Pro Server 5. For now all we want to do is provide a web page with a simple form able to search our FM database by name then return residence information.

Is it possible to host the same database using FMP Server 5 and the Internet at the same time? My understanding is in order for the db to be availiable on the web it would need to be connected to a secure port on our router and we wouldn't be able to access it internally via FMP Server 5.

Currently we're exporting the data to a txt file and using ASP scripting to draw the requested data from the txt file. It works but it's not live.

You need to enable WebCompanion in Client FM. The client must run the databases from server.

Try first Instant Web Publishing. It this works, maybe you will use FM Unlimited to allow more connections.

And maybe you will decide to use Custom Web Publishing.

you might also want to go to http://www.troi.com/ and have a look at their URL plugin for FileMaker.

I dont have any personal experience with it, but from what I understand it is used for generating simple web forms that can then have the data pulled into FileMaker.

Larry