FMAS 7 only supports up to 100 web users and 250 fm clients. what happens if u have more users? i mean... do u buy additional license or set another server up?

if setting another server up... how do u share the file among 2 servers? do u have to have 2 set of the same file and have some code to sync between the 2?

That is 100 session-managed web users (like in Instant Web Publishing). If you use Custom Web Publishing and no session-management there is no such limit. Then the bottleneck becomes your hardware and FMS' overall performance.

There is no built-in synch scheme between 2 or more FMS servers. www.syncdek.com has a product or you can roll your own since read & write data directly from FMS through either XML calls or ODBC/JDBC.

I'll assume this isn't a rhetorical question. The limits are absolute, not just a wake up call for additional licenses. I know of no way to setup two servers to serve more than 100/250 users and not have problems integrating two separate sets of data. FMI is clear about the application regime for FM, it's a workgroup level product (their famous bubble chart). Larger applications are better served by SQL back ends.

-bd

i am trying to imagine the scenario to be a business running totally dependant upon web services, and i would like to use FM for the backend server since it's so easy to design, implement, and run. other options all require much more development and costs, and sometimes after all those complex works, it's less efficient and doom to fail at basic levels.

i think maybe running multiple servers having multiple databases could solve the problem. each database will just be the same structure... then on the website when a new user is registered, a certain database server is assigned to the user...

so each server will handle, say, 1000 users or so...

moreover... i wonder how does FMS + MySQL + PHP do... for me i think IWP has been pretty fast web-wise, though i haven't worked with PHP + MySQL much.

or FMS + PHP combo should do too? hmm...

Don't forget that it's 100 concurrent users. I'm using IWP with plain FMP (5 concurrent sessions) to serve over 100 customers. Since my users are using IWP to schedule resources, they are not connected for too long... and I've set a short session idle timeout.

wow~ Reed, that sounds pretty amazing for what FMP can do with 5 concurrent sessions.

i have a question in mind that has been left unanswered for a while, that is, why would one consider putting MySQL between PHP and FMS? what's the reason and advantages for doing so?

i know MySQL is fast, but consider that it needs to sync with the FM database, wouldn't it be slower? or why not use PHP and FMS directly?

can someone help answer some of these questions for me?

I guess you could use PHP and MySQL for the web stuff, and use the ODBC data source capabilities of plain FMP to get the data synced into MySQL. <pokeAtFMI>At least if you have FMP on windows </pokeAtFMI> Then you could avoid having to pay for , or find hosting that uses FM server advanced.... taking advantage of cheap and plentiful MySQL hosting services. (Or free nonprofit academic use of MySQL)

thank you very much for the advice~ i think i am grasping the picture now...