Help! I'm putting together a new database and a relationship is now causing a catastrophic error.

The database has 1719 records (although it will grow to ~15000 over the next year if I can get this problem solved). Each record has a line # and an 8-digit coordinate (among other things).

I want to identify all records that have a coordinate "near" the current record's. So I made a calculation text field ("coordinate list"), which generates two lines with the coordinate rounded down to the nearest 250 and rounded up to the nearest 250. This field is then used for a self-join relationship.

The result is shown in a portal, generating a list of all related records that have a coordinate within the current 250 interval, as well as the next lower and next higher 250 interval. This works well -- I'm very happy with the speed at which Filemaker can find all these related records.

However, some records make Filemaker crash with the following error:

"Communication with the host was interrupted and could not be re-established. (10010)."

The only option is to close the file, after which Filemaker quits. The only mention of a 10010 error on the Filemaker web site refers to a problem with shared files, but this is a single user file on the local computer.

I can prevent the error by turning off "Store Calculated Results" for the relationship field "Coordinate list", but this kills the relationship. The error occurs when I try to access a record that has a large number of related records. The threshold seems to be 35 related records (34 is ok, duplicate one and down she goes). I need to be able to handle 100s of related records, so this obviously is a big problem for me.

What can I do? Am I just being greedy and asking Filemaker to do too much? It doesn't seem to take it very long to pull up 34 related records, and I can live with a longer delay. I just need this to work.

I'm running Filemaker Pro 6.0v4 on Mac OS X 10.2.6 on a dual processor G4 1.2 GHz with 1 GB RAM. I haven't tested it in OS 9 (that's next).

I've attached a stripped down version of the problematic file, with some records that have only a few relatives, and one cluster of 30ish records. Duplicate one of the records in this cluster 4 or 5 times and it should crash.

Thanks for any help!

-Terence

Terence:

Murphy:

That's an odd one. The "Communication with the host was interrupted" error is one that comes up when sharing (I see it alot on FM Server systems when the client machine has gone to sleep, when a cable comes out of the wall, etc.) but I don't recall the "10010" error number. Possibly I've just never noticed.

Regardless, I've downloaded the file, and I get the same error here once I reach 35 records. I'll try to look at it over the weekend and see if I think of anything.

-Stanley

Eureka!

The bug is caused by the sort on the relationship. It looks like it can handle sorting by fixed fields (e.g. coordinate), but not by calculations (which can be nested into other relationships to boot). This I can deal with! Now just to add some lookup fields to launder the calculations, and hopefully all will be solved.

-Terence

Congratulations!

For the record, I was just looking at your file and also had Filemaker closing like reported.

I'm using 6.0v4 on 10.2.6 as well, and I'm curious about the platform and OS that Stanley uses. See if this bug is a general Filemaker problem or something with the version/OS combination.

Regards,

Ernst.

I couldn't make it crash with 40 related records on FM 5.5v2 Win2k Professional.

Ernst:

I'm on 10.2.6, using 5.5v1

-Stanley

Thanks for the info about reproducibility of the crash. I'm the most curious, but not entirely surprised, that it didn't reproduce in Win2k, which I imagine has a somewhat different code base. Now I just have to figure out how to report this bug to Filemaker...

-Terence

Report FM bugs Right Here

No crash nor message with OS8.6 running FM5.5

Wow. I didn't know people still ran 8.6 anymore (even though I thought it was better than 9)

I'm still running 8.6 on any computer that can run it. It's rock solid.

I run all my servers on 8.6 and they never ever crash.

-Stanley

Well yes I'm still running that 8.6 with FM5.5.

Waiting for a new PowerMac G5, Panther and FileMaker7. From what I understood, this is likely to happen before the Charger's first win

From what I understood, this is likely to happen before the Charger's first win

Talk about kicking a man when he's down.

It's ok. Havent had a winning season since like 1996, so i'm used to it. Mark my words, it will turn around.

kenneth2k1 said:

Mark my words, it will turn around.

But of course it will. Laws of statistics and averages demand it.

It just may take a few millennia for the necessary to occur.

I had a record in one of my databases that crashed everytime it was viewed, it took me a bit to track down but when I did I found a corrupted container field, when I deleted the record all was well.

Charles