Would someone please point me in the right direction?

I have 19 offices that all have standalone FM databases. I would like to collect all updates to their databases on a daily basis to a central, home office database. The offices only have dial-up internet connections. I am sure that solutions to this have alrady been worked out, and I don't want to reinvent the wheel. Any suggestions where to start looking for ideas?

Database synchronisation is always a difficult (and nasty) piece of work. It's far better to avoid doing it by centralising the database.

Create a script in each database that exports the daily additions and changes. Get the users to e-mail this file to you.

There is an expensive plugin that supposedly handles this...See it at

web page

Steve

RE: dialup

I'd imagine that dialup is the main issue since it is a slow, non-persistant internet connection. IMO, what you want requires a persistent, preferably fast internet connection, or it's a hassle. Vaughan's suggestion of a centralized db is the way to go. Host the main db in your office and everyone else just connects remotely.

Steve's reference to SyncDek looks good but seems to require an e-mail account at each "node" to do the syncronization so the dialup still might be an issue. Good to know such a thing exists, though. Thanx, Steve!

--ST

Thanks for your comments.

I am concerned that having a centralized database will be too slow as the company expands. I see 50 offices all trying to access the database and it just bogging down to a standstill.

Does anyone have any experience with this size central database?

1. Switch to FM7. Performance across a WAN is much better.

2. The SyncDek solution is a good solution if you want to sync disconneced data.

3. No personal experience but for this sort of thing Citrix is supposed to be an outstanding solution. The heavy lifting is done on one centralized box (or a few, given your user count) and performance is great according to all who use this method.

4. Will a web interface work?

HI,

I use SyncDeK to synchronise 20+ databases at 4 different remote locations. It works great, you do need certain things for the plugin to work, i.e Windows 2000/XP or Mac OS X.3, with the latest Java and an email account for each node.

The only problem I find, is when I make updates to one database (interface/structure etc), I have to make the same updates three times, a pain. There is a "Version Update Manager" module with this plugin, theoretically where I can update one database and "Sync" the updated files to the other nodes, but I'm not too confident of that feature.

Regarding BruceR's post, I dont know what WAN performance is like with FM7, but with FM6 its really slow, and in truth unworkable....and the rumours I've heard from our developer group they havn't made FM7 that much better., although I haven't used this feature myself.

Ideally, I would urge you to setup terminal services and buy a FM VLA licence. that way data is centralised, hence one data store and one machine "processing" the data. Dialup access to the server would be fine, as terminal services is a vector based "display" solution which doesn't take much bandwidth, you can use a web browser on your remote machines to access the centralized data.