It seems that running MS Exchange will give some options on FileMaker that will make my life easier. However, it supposed to run on the server itself, and we try not to run software on that. I use my own machine to host our main database, and store them on my hard drive. I store any dbases that are single-user on the server, along with all of our other files. If I install Exchange on our server, will this still work out? Also, does anyone know if Exchange is very demanding - will our system suffer for using up those resources? The server is a PC running Server 2000 with

55GB (40 unused)

500 MB RAM

Pentium processor

1.5 GHz

and we only have five machines or so on the network. Someone suggested I go back to Exchange 5.5 to avoid problems. I'm running FMP 6 and all our general MS stuff is 2000. Any advice?

I have administered exchange for several years now and I can tell you that it can be pretty demanding on hardware if you have a bunch of power users or a large volume of e-mails.

You DON'T want to use Exchange 5.5 on a 2000 box. For that matter, I'm not even sure that will work. 512MB for exchange 2000 is a bare-bones minimum requirement, regardless of what Microsoft says. You can't purchase Exchange 2000 anymore, since Exchange 2003 is out, so you might want to confine your search to Small Business Server 2003. It has an integrated suite of apps that is targeted at your size of company. And, it's cheap compared to the price of plain Exchange 2003.

You can successfully run other applications on the same server as exchange (SQL, file/print, ISA server, etc..) so FileMaker may run OK. I've never tried it. I may be worth testing it on a spare machine if you have one. Sometimes software interacts with other software and the outcome is usually negative. Test it or pay someone to test it if you have that luxury. It will save you grief down the road.

Good luck with your project

Just curious - what functionality are you looking for with Exchange in conjunction with FileMaker?