Existing web server to display FM data

[seanc]

Hi All,

I have a webserver running on my intranet, separate to my filemaker webserver but on the same subnet, and I would like to have some of the pages on that webserver display some filemaker data. Is there any html/cdml code I can use to "pull" data from the filemaker server and display it on that page, or will I have to redirect over to the filemaker server?

Hope that makes sense?

Thanks,

Sean.

[Reed]

Are you running v6 unlimited? You can have a program (php for example) on your webserver pull xml data from the FM Box into the php program. Using fx.php, you can process this data and create dynamic web pages from your FM data.

[seanc]

Hmmm. My company has an open license with filemaker so I can get v6 unlimited, but at the moment I'm just using v6 vanilla. Since I'm the only one using it so far thats been fine.

I'll decribe what I'm after a bit better.

I have a static webpage on a IIS server which is not the filemaker server. On the middle of that page is a table which has three columns (Server name, IP Address, Network Utilisation). I have a filemaker database which is populated weekly with the contents of that table, and once a week I manually update the webpage with the filemaker data. Obviously thats not an efficient way to go, but I needed to get this working quickly. I can't just have filemaker build the whole page because some of the page is the repsonsibility of other people.

Now, php does sound like an option, but I really don't know anything about php and I suspect it will take me a fair bit of time to work out how to do this with it. I can do that (in fact I may have to when it comes to FM7 since CDML is gone), but again I'm looking for something I can quickly.

Another point is my webserver is a production and I'll have a lot of trouble convincing change management to allow me to install anything on it. Trust me, its a large company and installing PHP will take me 3 months and tons of paperwork to get approved.

Any other suggestions?

Thanks... Sean!

[Jeff Spall]

Hi, If you have two webservers and are running version6 of FMPro on one of them, you only need to install the Web server connector on them to have both servers able to use the databases. This is probably not the best performance option (one or two webservers, one DB server would be better) but its fine for the kind of loads you are using. If you use CDML, you would have html format pages that your other people could edit (assuming there data isn't from another db source) or just build them a browser-based editing source - we do that for our Intranet home page where the news and info are input by 3 regular people (for different department news items) plus anyone else for social news and stuff. Works just fine.

regards, jeff

[seanc]

Hi Jeff,

If I understand you correctly I can install the web server connector on more than one IIS server and they can all pull data from my filemaker server, using cdml which I am already familiar with? If thats true, thanks for letting me know, I never did fully understand what that connector was for. I'm not overly familiar with it but I'm pretty sure the connector only works with unlimited so I'd have to get that, but that wouldn't be a problem.

On the other hand I'll have the same problem getting the connector installed on the production server as getting php installed.

So I don't think we've solved my problem yet

Cheers...Sean!

[Jeff Spall]

Hi, webserver connector is a very easy install and it doesn't need a copy of FileMaker on that computer. The only thing to do would be if you had been making CDML calls on port 591 direct to filemaker - you just delete all the ":591"s from urls etc.

I think the connector will work with a regular copy of FMPro, but it's only included with unlimited for licence reasons (because it would see all the web calls coming from one IP address!)

regards, jeff

[Garry Claridge]

You could use Frames to break-up the page served by IIS. One of the Frames could hold the FM data.

You may also be able to pull data into the innerHTML of a <div>.

You may also be able to use ASP to access the database.

Good Luck.

Garry

[seanc]

Hi Guys,

I'm having a bit of trouble getting my head around the Web Server Connector.

Lets say hypothetically I have it installed on my main webserver. Will that allow me to leave the existing webpage in place on that server and populate the table it contains with information from filemaker, or will I have to move the whole page to the filemaker webserver? If I have to move the page I can't see how its helpful.

I guess I could use inline frames to pull that table in, but I'd rather avoid using IE specific code if I can...

I'll have to look into ASP, but it's another thing I know nothing about so I expect a steep learning curve before I can implement anything useful.

Thanks,

Sean.