Losing Relationship "match" criteria

[taz]

We have numerous databases. We are running FMP 5.3 (recently changed from 4). We also recently created several relational databases. The problem is that the relationships keep changing? Let me try to explain. We have a relationship setup on a College/Dept File and a Student Record File to say "match the "academic degree abbreviation field on the Student Record File (SRF) to the "degree abbreviation" field on the College/Dept file. When that relationship matches, the relationship works and the fields from the College/Dept file show on the SRF. We have other databases that refer to this relationship as well. One of these is a Graduation File. We have many users who use the various databases. They are all using the same version of FMP and are on Windows 2000 or Windows XP machines. Everything will go along fine, then randomly and I cannot determine what makes it happen, the related fields are blank on the Graduation File even though the related file opens just fine. When I check the relationship, it has changed. It tries to match the "academic degree abbreviation" field on the Graduation File to the "Semester" field that is also on the Graduation File. We have to redefine the relationship from the Graduation File to the Dept/College File.

Another problem that we get repeatedly is a sharing problem. When we attempt to sign on to one of the databases, we get the following message:

Filemaker cannot host a file because of a network error. Files marked as Multi-User will not be available over the network. (10048)

Any ideas?

Any help/suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[zincb]

YES! I had the same problem and have always thought I did something wrong. It was only one or two files that had a problem -- the rest migrated just fine.

I repeatedly made lame apologies to my users, and repaired those scripts and relationships over and over, until I finally (and you are NOT going to like this) re-wrote the files from scratch, with newly created fields and "fresh" relationships. Only then did the problems go away. My totally unscientific theory was that in the migration from FMP4 to 5, just maybe two fields were assigned the same ID, or maybe they just became _slightly_ corrupted, but not badly enough to prevent opening by FMP.

Although it sounds like your match fields are typical text fields, I would also double-check to ensure that your Relationships arent trying to link Global-dependent or calculations that might be somehow global dependent.

As far as the error message, I would check the Sharing setings and also ensure that any files closed via the Server Admin Tool have been re-opened via the Admin Tool, particularly supporting files that may open minimized.