I have a portal which shows documents (.doc or .pdf or .xls) that are associated with

a person. I have little upload buttons (for insert file) and download buttons (export field contents

of the container field) on each row of the portal. My problem is that the records that have a few files in the portal take far too long to load. It's so slow that you really can't "browse" the records.

Is filemaker really LOADING those container fields into memory every time you browse to a record :??

jeeeez... is there any way to avoid that or change the caching on Server to help with this :

I thought I could not use file references because the users are connecting to the file hosted on Filemaker Server.... OR CAN I :? I saw another post about this.. and saw a note that offered some hope about creating a relationship to show file references from the other file..

Could anyone offer any advice ? I'm baffled.

I was thinking there might be a way to script the upload button to upload the file TO the server and then put a reference to the file somewhere else (which would then be seen in the portal).

I'm guessing that file references would take a very short time to display when browsing the records.

I'm willing to use a plugin if there's no other way but I'd like to avoid that if possible.

thanks,

beta

The table I was referencing was in another file on the server.

I tried making the file reference relative, but that didn't help.

WHAT DID HELP though was recreating the table in the main database -- keeping it all under one roof.

I wanted to avoid this, so that I didn't have to backup a huge database every day, but I guess I have no choice. I'm glad it's working faster.

oh no.. I spoke too soon... it seems to work sporadically.. browses quickly sometimes and slowlly most of the time.. but it is better... any ideas on how to make the browsing quick ALL the time ?

I would think that two things might help. 1) Don't show the actual container fields in the portal, display a thumbnail or better yet, just the file name in the portal or 2) Store the actual files on a File Server with a volume mounted on the desktop of each user and save a reference in the container field.

In working with images under FM 6 we tried all different methods of storage to optimize display speed (we were dealing with images only). We finally stored the file names of the images in text fields. The actual images were stored on a mounted File Server volume. Images are displayed by using the Troi File plug-in to populate global fields with thumbnails "on the fly" (as needed). We stored no images or references in container fields (other than temporarily in global containers).

-bd

Thanks for the advice. How can I get the filename from a file that I've inserted into a portal ? (important note: I am not and can not use file references (because my end users are uploading these files from various locations)

please tell me there's a way to do this.

hoping....

How can I get the filename from a file that I've inserted into a portal ?

You mentioned you were using a script to do the upload - if you change the import step from import file to import folder, you can grab the filename on the import. I don't know how to get the filename after it's been imported, sorry, just this method on import.

However, using import folder instead of file can be problematic in scripts, and will require lots of testing to make it right. But it is one way to skin that cat.

hth,

Tony