Installers, linking, and archiving a run time solu

[AAHH]

I am new to the whole Developer world - so new that my version is 2 years old!! I am using FM Dev 5.5. I have been working in my spare time, obviously, to develop a runtime solution. I plan to offer the solution to my clients in Mac and PC versions.

My solution is actually 5 related databases. My main database is about 2 MB. The others are about 500KB each. No biggie. But the data ... will be in the GB range. I will partially enter data in the database for my clients. The data include QT Movies and pictures.

In Dev 5.5, pictures are actually inserted into the database. (A script would be nice for doing that, anyone have ideas?). But movies are referenced or linked. I am concerned about losing the movie links and or any relational database links in the process of binding, installing and archiving. Does anyone have any wisdom?

Additionally, would it be better to use an installer or just compress the data (est. 2 to 4 GB) onto DVD? Any recommendations as to installers (would prefer one that is available in both Windows and Mac)?

Lastly, Archiving... done by the client/user. With such a large amount of data are there programs available to help a novice user backup/archive any changes he may make to the solution? Would that be something that I should supply? I realize that the user could do a "save as", but what about the folder/directory with the linked movies? How can the user archive and not lose those links?

I am new to this and apologize for my naivete. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[QuinTech]

Hi, aahh. I don't know anything about compressing sound, video, or graphics, but as far as the user archiving issue goes:

If you're on Windows, you might try compression utilities that can be operated via command line. We use LHA here, which i think is no longer available compiled for Windows though you might find source code. I imagine PKZIP is still operable on a command line; i know it used to be. Once you have one of those, you could write a batch file to compress the appropriate files, then create a script in FM that calls that batch file through the Send Message step. And i can't verify this really, but i see no reason why this would cause the runtime to lose the link to the movie, though as i said, i have never worked seriously with movies and such in Filemaker.

Does this help?

Jerry

[AAHH]

yes, helps a little bit. I am not a proficient programmer, so it looks like I need to "do some learning". It's the basic reason I post this thread (ie. what do i need to learn!!) :-)

Thanks

[QuinTech]

Find a shareware (or regular paid software) compression utility you want to use and i'll help you with the batch file part of it. I can't recommend one really, but i notice that if you search for "compression command line" on download.com the first one the comes up is 7-Zip, which is freeware.

J

[AAHH]

Much appreciated. Am leaving town for a few days - I will check that out on Monday.

Thanks again.