Upgrading FMP 5 to FMP 7

[eSBee]

Hello all

I'm a newbie to FMP and have taken on the task of performing the above mentioned upgrade. Could you please help me with some possibly silly questions?

Currently, we are using FMP 5 on a mixture of XP and Win 2K PCs. One of the Win 2K PCs is hosting the database files over our client/server network.

1. On this PC the LDAC plug-in was installed, when I upgrade/convert to v7 how will I get this plug-in back?

2. Is it possible to run both the v5 and v7 databases simultaneously? Is so how is it done? I tried searcing for licensing restrictions on filemaker.com but couldn't find any relevant information.

3. We want to use the container field to store links to other applications and open them from this area, is this possible and will it be necessary to set-up an ODBC? If an ODBC is needed will I need to set it up on all the client machines or just the host?

4. There are 2 methods of hosting files is there any major advantages of using one over the other? We currently use the TCP/IP network option.

5. Where can I find out about the changes to script syntax?

Many thanks in advance for any help that you provide.

[Matthew F]

I'm on a Mac so my answers might not be entirely correct on the PC platform....

>>1. On this PC the LDAC plug-in was installed, when I upgrade/convert to v7 how will I get this plug-in back?

The Mac version doesn't come with a LDAC plug-in anymore. It does come with several ODBC drivers. The help pages state:

FileMaker Pro includes ODBC client drivers for the following data sources:

Text (Windows and Mac OS)

Oracle 9i Release 2 (Windows and Mac OS)

SQL Server 2000 (Mac OS)

FileMaker Pro 7 (Windows)

Additionally, Windows includes ODBC client drivers, such as SQL Server driver, with the operating system.

>>2. Is it possible to run both the v5 and v7 databases simultaneously? Is so how is it done? I tried searcing for licensing restrictions on filemaker.com but couldn't find any relevant information.

I'm sure this is possible. I don't know if violates your license agreement. As you're converting your databases you won't need to quit v.7 to launch v.5 which helps you troubleshoot the conversion process.

3. We want to use the container field to store links to other applications and open them from this area, is this possible and will it be necessary to set-up an ODBC? If an ODBC is needed will I need to set it up on all the client machines or just the host?

This is trivial in v.7. You now just select the container and choose Insert...File from the menu. Filemaker stores a reference to the document and displays the documents icon in the container. Double clicking the icon opens it with the appropriate application.

>>4. There are 2 methods of hosting files is there any major advantages of using one over the other? We currently use the TCP/IP network option.

TCP/IP will allow Mac clients to access your database.

>>5. Where can I find out about the changes to script syntax?

The application comes with extensive help pages and expamples for each script command. You don't need to learn syntax (i.e. punctuation) if you use select the preformed commands directly within the ScriptMaker. It's more like filling in the blanks with the fields you want to include.

The bigger issue will be whether you want to restructure your database and if so to what extent. FM v.7 will allow you to combine related databases as multiple "tables" within a single file. This is a good idea but will be a fair amount of work. The application will automatically convert the old databases to v.7 files which saves a lot of work but it won't do this restructuring. You might also decide to take advantage of other new features like the ability to create relationships based on multiple criteria. In v.5 we did silly things like create calculated fields specifically for use as Match Fields in relationships because because v.5 didn't allow multiple criteria in a relationship.

If you do incorporate multiple v.5 files as tables within a single v.7 file then you will also need to fix a lot of broken links in your scripts. This shouldn't be too hard if you understand what the script is doing.