Interfacing Filemaker with Other Online Apps

[Philby]

Hello,

First the Background,

Our company just purchased SugarCRM. Which is a web based Customer Relationship

Management program built using MySQL and PHP.

I have developed some office databases in Filemaker that my boss wants to try to

incorporate with this app.

One of them is a pricing database which we use to

price our products. It has 6 or 7 popup lists whose values in the lists change

depending on the previous values. By drilling down, we come up with a price.

We want to add this pricing finder to the Quote section of the CRM software.

I'm OK at programing with Filemaker, but have no experience with PHP or MySQL.

The soultion needs to be web based as the users ( about 10 ) will be all over the country.

Now the questions,

#1 If I add a button to the CRM software, can I get a pop-up Filemaker window

which the user can select the right part and have the results passed to right

fields in the open browser window?

#2 I have Filemaker Server, do I need Advanced?

#3 Should I just query the Filemaker Database using PHP?

#4 Should I just port the Filemaker Database to MySQL?

#5 How would you do it?

I am trying to get a good approach, before I invest too much time trying to do

it one way just to find I should have gone another route.

Thanks in advanced....

[Garry Claridge]

#1 You should be able to by using PHP.

#2 Alternatives to FM Server Advanced exist, check the FMWebSchool site.

#3 Yes or XMLST

#4 If you do not have a strong reason for staying with FM

#5 Review the system needs. Do some tests, these could be quite simple.

Good Luck.

Garry