Corrupted imported data

[leahpo]

Hi,

Would anyone have an idea what could be the problem:

The application resides on the Mac OS X server, FM Server 5.0

One of the users is creating records using a copy of the application,

locally on her Windows ME computer.

She exported the data, sent it to me, and I imported it into the server-based

application. The record in question has one letter in one word of one field(out of >400 fields)changed to a period. The user says that no one changed that particular field, and it happened as a result of the import.

Since I still have the file that was sent to me, I re-imported it again - and the problem is not there.

I was wondering if anyone knows of a possibility of data corruption during import. Also, the server is MAC OS X, and the client is Windows. When the records are created the user copies/paste from other Windows applications.

I think that the user changed it by mistake, but just to be sure I wanted to hear other's experience.

Thanks

[Steven H. Blackwell]

Actually, if I understand your description clearly, there could be some corruption here. FM Server 5 does not run on OS X. Only Server 5.5 runs on OS X.

What is actually happening here?

Old Advance Man

[Steven H. Blackwell]

Try booting from the "classic" environment with OS X off and see what happens.

i suspect someone has turned on file sharing and that was the cause of the toruble.

Old Advance Man

[leahpo]

The FM 5.0 runs on MAC OS in classic mode 9.1.

[leahpo]

Hi,

I am booting from Classic - OS X is running in the background. File sharing is on - I checked. What does file sharing have to do with corrupt data? And how can ONE character in a large (few thousand characters) field be changed?

Leah

[Steven H. Blackwell]

Turn the OS X part off. Run on;y from Classic.

File sharing causes corruption.

Old Advance Man

[leahpo]

Thanks, Old Advance Man

I turned File Sharing off on this server a while ago, when I started it initially, but someone must have turned it on again, though no one remembers doing it. Is it possible that it will turn itself on when Mac server is rebooted?

Now, we cannot turn Mac OS X off without re-installing operating system. We have Mac OS 10.01 running in native mode, and OS 9.1 is also installed, runs in emulation mode.

I have FileMaker 5.0 server installed, as well as FileMaker 5.5 server.

The reason I am running FileMaker 5.0 server, because FM 5.5 server running on Mac OS X was extremly slow, even internally, and I could not find the root of this problem. It runs reasonable fast on FM 5.0 server, running classic 9.1 in emulation mode.

I run field-by-field data comparison between two versions of the database - current and the version just after data was migrated from the legacy system(Oct 2001). There are a few records that have corrupt data - staff that is using this system (chemical database) are scientists who keep track of what they change and when, so they know what was corrupted. This Mac OS is used ONLY for serving FM databases, and no one has access to this computer for any other purpose. Is it possible that File Sharing caused data corruption in FileMaker files?

I am puzzled by this.

Thanks

Leah

[Steven H. Blackwell]

File sharing causes corruption, especially in OS X. And yes, you can turn OS X off. Select the OS 9 partition as the boot.

FileMAker Server 5.5 and FileMAker Server 5.0v3 both run in OS 9. But for best performance there, don't have OS 9 running in emulation; have OS 9 as the boot OS. Keep the FM Server application in the foreground at ALL times. This is different that Windows 2000 Server, Red HAt Linux, or MAc OS X where it runs as a service or a daemon, not as an application.

You may have to rebuild your files and/or clean your data.

See the Best Practices White Paper on the FMI web site, if you can find where they moved it on the new site. If not, email me, and I'll send it to you.

Old Advance Man