Converting 6 to 7 today, Looking for advise.

[Munchie]

Hello All,

I've decided to take the plunge this weekend, and convert my FM6 files to FM7.

Question: I have a number of files that have THOUSANDS of records in them. 60,000 to 100,000 records.

Is Filemaker 7 Faster if it is in the same file? Is it better to rebuild these files into Tables on my main file, or keep them seperated the way FM6 does.

I use my database over a VPN, and I'm concerned about speed.

I'll have about 500,000 records in a single file between the different tables, and after using FM6 so long, that number scares me.

Thanks!

Munchieman!

[Ender]

They should perform about the same combined as separate. There are some advantages to combining files, but it's not wise to do so without careful planning and some rewriting of your scripts to properly manage multiple tables in a file.

I strongly recommend reading the FM7 Foundations and Migration Methodologies tech brief on filemaker.com to get familiar with the changes in FM7 and to learn about the issues you should be aware of when converting a solution. This paper also discusses the idea of combining files so that you can decide how (and if,) you should do this.

If your solution is very complex, involving many files, the conversion process will likely take much longer than a weekend. It depends on how many files, how complex your security management needs to be, how good your skills as a developer are, and if you have access to analysis tools to assist in fixing problems.

I have been working on a conversion of a 90 file solution for about 6 months, and am finally importing the data to complete the conversion this weekend. My FM7 solution is starting out with about 50 files, which I will combine as I rewrite the modules.

[Munchie]

Thanks for the Info!

One strange thing that has happened, my main administrator account disappeared. I'm not able to get admin acess to my FM7 file now.

I'm going to adjust the permissions in my FM6 file, and convert it again.

Any idea why this happens?

Thanks again!

[Ender]

The FM6 passwords are turned into accounts. You can log into to them by leaving the account name blank and just typing the password. Also, passwords are case sensitive in FM7, where in previous versions they were not.

This is one of many issues that's covered in that tech brief.

[Munchie]

That ended up being the issue. I never knew the case of my master password. Trial and error got it.

Thanks