Dedicated web database for Instant Web Publish

[Jana]

I want to try to publish a database for access on the web. Guidelines say I should create a dedicated file for the Web. I'm not sure how to set it up. Here's my scenario

I have a Time Sheet database with daily record for each employee and a related Time Line Item file that has the records for each time increment and the client job number it is assigned to.

If I create a Web database relating to the Time Sheet database, do I have to create all the same fields from both Time Sheet and Time Line Items in the Web database or do I just create portals to the information. I can't create the relationship without defining some field(s).

Please help me see the logic on how this should work.

Thanks

Jana

[Steve T.]

Hi, Jana! I kinda had the same Q a couple years back and no one had an answer for me then. I had seen a nice little diagram that FM made showing what you should do for web publishing, but not saying how you should do it. I had asked here in FMFORUMS if there was a way to auto-update 1 db from another db and basically the answer I got was, no. They did say that you could do this w/scripts but would have to manually launch/trigger the scripts to do it.

Now, I hear there are plug-ins that might be able to auto-trigger scripts at timed intervals but I have not used them before. We manually launch EXPORT/IMPORT scripts every day to update the "web" database from our "main" database. The web db should only have those fields that are needed for the web user. For example, we do not put sensitive info like social security numbers or credit card numbers in the web db at all because we do not have confidence in FMP web security.

So, to answer your main question... I think the answer is to make a 2nd shell of your main db and share that over the web instead of the main db. They can be the same or different, but I'd be careful about what's in the web one.

--ST