Best procedures for file version control?

[John_Hart]

I am using FMP 6 on Win 98. I have created a student record database for our church's religious ed program and have several volunteers who have managed to enter data into backup copies instead of the original database (lost and fragmented data!). I would like to make my database file managment as fool-proof as possible.

I plan on using a startup script to test if the file they are opening is the original version by testing if Status(CurrentFileName) is correct and then forcing the script to open the correct version.

I would like to 'save a copy as' to a version that includes the date in the filename. Can I specify the path and filename and include the date without prompting the user? Any ideas on how to do this? Any ideas on proper database version controls would be greatly appreciated.

I am currently re-verifying ~ 600 student records and want to put this in place before I re-train my helpers and put them back to work!

[transpower]

Have all users go to the same Main Menu layout.

You could use Send Event and a batch file to copy the file name with the date concatenated.

[John_Hart]

Is Send Event an Apple Script function? I am on FMP 6 on Win 98. I still don't see anyway to concatenate the current date to the file name so that my backup file is saved as a dated backup from my shutdown script. Thanks.

[transpower]

No, it's an FM script step. OK, use this script step:

Send Event copyfm.bat & " file" & Filter(Get(CurrentDate);"0123456789") & ".fp7"

where copyfm.bat contains the line

copy filename.fp7 %1

where filename.fp7 is your production FM file and file12032004.fp7 would be the name of the backup file for today's date. The Filter function is to strip the "/" 's from the date.

[John_Hart]

Transpower, I never took the time to thank you, but your advice helped for my project in FMP6. Now I would like to do something similar in an FMP7 solution that I am serving through IWP. Since both "Send Event" and "Save Copy as" are not supported script steps for IWP, do you have any idea how I can have users create a backup file when they log out of the web page? Thanks in advance.