Starter Question

[Philland]

We have been running a work flow solution on Filemaker Server here for years, a company of about a dozen people. It is currently running on a 450 mhz G3 tower, but I have a newer Win2K box available which I can switch to.

Here's the problem. We recently opened a remote office, another 5 people, 2,000 miles away. They have a T-1 going in there as we do here. Silly me, I thought they would be able to connect directly to our server here through IP hosting and life would go happily on. They are saying that the files are moving so slow at their end that it's unworkable.

I have connected with the office from hotels and the like while on the road and not seen such slow downs. Dealing with filemaker on the web is relatively new to me. Would I be better hosting a site? Any insight out there about how I should approach this, what I can do to help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance

Phil

[EddyB]

Hi Phil,

This is a bit of a huge question!

I'll concentrate on the hosting bit, maybe someone else will post regarding your T1 slow down - I'm no expert in that area!

Firstly, you will need a PC running FM Unlimited, this hosts your database to an unlimited number of clients over the web. (I'll come back to this as you may be able to do it using FMPro)

It is recommended that this PC be running a client OS - not Server.

The PC will need to have a connection to the outside world and have it's own static IP address.

OK, now you have 2 choices:

1) IWP (Instant Web Publishing)

2) CWP (Custom Web Publishing)

1) You set a few settings here and there, open your database on the PC where FM Unlimited is running and hey presto you have an online database

2) You create your own html pages and include "CDML" tags to make the connection to your database.

Point 2 is much more user friendly, you can set the pages to how you want it to look and create a nice feel to the site.

Point 1 - you have no choice - basically you get what you are given and you cannot change much in the way of design or functionality.

Point 2 is only recommended though if you have some experience of HTML or are willing to read up on this.

Once you have grasped HTML, you need to learn CDML - not that hard really, a few extra tags here and there. There is a great resource that many FM Web developers rely on called the CDML Reference database - it contains all the CDML tags you will ever need and an explanation of each.

OK, back to the FM Unlimited issue.

FM Unlimited hosts your database on the web (whether you are using IWP or CWP doesn't matter)

An unlimited amount of users can connect to the database in any time period.

Now FM Unlimited is identical to FMPro except for that 1 point above. FMPro will host your database on the web if you do all the settings but there is a limit to how many users can connect to the databases hosted in any 24 hour period.

Now with your explanation, this would not be a problem. I see your setup as being the following:

FM Server has your databases, hosting them to the dozen or so people in your office - no change to the current way things are working for you lot.

FMPro opens up this database off the server on the PC connected to the outside world (the PC I mentioned at the start of this post)

The users in your remote office and anyone out on the road, in hotels etc will connect via the web to the PC running FMPro. As long as this does not exceed more than 10 different IP addresses in a 24 hour period - if it does you need FM Unlimted.

OK, I'll stop there! Like I said it's a bit of a huge question so I've just given you an overview. If you'd like anymore detail on any of the points or want to clarify anything just post again.

Hope this has been of some help to you.

Regards

Ed.

[Anatoli]

Put on the W2K server Terminal services. It works decently from 64k (!) slow line.

We have the same scenario (LA to Mex) and FM server in LA and 50 happy users in Mexico.

[Steve T.]

Hi, Philland! A 450MHz G3 is no speed demon by today's standards but it's no slouch either. I've actually read that more (ahem) humble systems can even perform BETTER than new machines in some cases and that drive speed will help more than CPU speed.

Silly you? Well, I would have thought the same thing. T1's on both ends sounds good... (they're true T1's right, not "shared" or anything?). Maybe do a pipe speed check to see if they're really getting what they think they're getting speedwise. Maybe have them host a DB so you can see what it's like as a client, too.

As to Eddy's tips, I haven't used Instant Web Publishing but it might suit you in the short term. I just seem to read a lot of "IWP can't do this.. or that" and I would suspect most users of this forum are Custom Web Publishing folks... but, hey, maybe we CWP folks need the most help and the IWP folks are all happily ignorant of CWP so don't come to this forum... maybe, maybe.

Anyway, I'm not sure that will help. If you share your FMP db's over TCP/IP or you share them via the web over TCP/IP, will there be much difference? Any high-tech network folks out there that can help Philland out? Good luck!