We need a section of this forum just for my questions.

The problem is the search/export script. Just to review, it is running on a seperate computer from the FM Server. It runs just in FMP3.0 It is supposed to take an input, search for the record on the Server, then export the data to a tab delimted file.

Here is the breakdown:

SCRIPT :KICKER Imports data from a text file containing the SSN of the desired patient.

KICKER then executes a remote script on CHART which resides on the Server. CHART is the main application holding all the patient data. KICKER copies the SSN, then

CHART script goes to the layout, goes into FIND mode, pastes the SSN, then does the FIND and exports the results to a tab delimeted file called PATIENT.TAB

Now when I run this whole thing in FMP, it works just great. BUT when I try to run it on the server, it goes nowhere. It would appear that the call to the remote script is failing.

I have even tried putting KICKER on the same box as the server. Still won't go.

Now alledgedly this used to work.

I think it may be a permissions problem. What do all you experts think? And if it is, which permissions am I looking at since I've played with all I can find?

Did it ever work?

I seem to remember that earlier versions of FMP had difficult with exports/imports when the files were opened as guests. It'd lose the found set.

I *know* it works in FMP 6.0.

Here is a thought out of the blue. Can you do steps that require a user interface on the server? Even if it is hidden? Copying and pasting in the find is one example. I don't know enough about FMP to know this for sure but on other systems that I have programmed on you need to be careful of what you do where.

I think I may have found the problem. I tried just opening CHART in FMP on the server. Then I tried to connect to it from a workstation. No good. So I checked the obvious and sure enough, CHART is in SINGLE-USER.

However, the MULTI-USER is faded out and I can not change it. This is strange since if I take a copy to my workstation I don't have this problem. Does the server actually lock the files into single user even if it isn't running?

Yex, FMS locks the files.

FMS can be set up to host single-user files too -- look in thge FMS preferences. Of course 9only one user can use a single-user file at a time.

To change the sharing setting you'll need to close the file in FMS and open it in FMP.

"Here is a thought out of the blue. Can you do steps that require a user interface on the server? Even if it is hidden? Copying and pasting in the find is one example."

Think of FMS as just another way of sharing the file -- like a network volume, only better for FMP databases. Everything happens on the client's computer when it's opened in FMP.

The only gotchas for multi-user mode are processes that rely on changing field values in lots of records: for instance, some people do this to mark found sets of records. This will break in multi-user mode when another user goes to mark "their" found set -- it'll destroy the first user's marks. This has nothing to do with whether the files are hosted by FMP or FMS, it's a bad design issue where the assumption has been made that there is only one user.

The other gotcha is record locking which can affect replace processes too.

So I should be able to run a script on a different computer that executes the script that is in the main file.

For some reason it won't open the main files hosted on FMS.

I've got some ideas on possibilities such as maybe connecting to the main files first THEN trying to run the external script.