Filemaker 7.0 Sucks

[weseverett]

I am no developer, but merely a one man operation who has self taught himself Filemaker over the last 10 years. In trying to convert my FMPRO 6.0 database over to FMPRO 7.0, many of my scripts became corrupted and will not work. Unbelievably, Filemaker either did not anticipate this problem or did not have the foresight to include the script debugger in the standard version. They must think that I am stupid enough to purchase a new version of FMPRO 7.0 Developer to fix the scripts that I already had working.

When contacting FMPRO, I merely get the "well maybe conversion doesn't make sense for you" response. While I have been a big fan of FMPRO in the past, I think they did a crummy job on this upgrade. My suspicion is that they know it is junk and are just hopint it will get rectified down the road.

I, for one, will not be making the upgrade and will wait for Version 8.0 until they have worked out the bugs.

[stanley]

Wes:

If "many" of your scripts became corrupted, either you failed to convert all of your files together (you are using a multi-file relational db in both FMP 5.5 and 6.0, and you cannot convert the files piecemeal) or you are using lots of calls to external functions, plug-ins, etc.

I AM a developer, and I've converted numerous solutions, some of which were absolute disasters when I arrived on-scene. FMP7 has converted them, for the most part, very cleanly and without complaint. Most often the worst result of conversion has to do with layouts that get a little frazzled. I have yet to run into a scripting foul-up that I would use the word "corrupted" on.

It may help that I have read all of the conversion documentation. Before you throw your copy of FMP7 out, I recommend you do the same.

-Stanley

[weseverett]

I am not "using a multi-file relational db" in the scripts that are being corrupted. While I have not done a complete inventory of the problem, I looked at one where FMPRO 7.0 seemed to be adding "Go to Field []" Once these lines are removed, the script worked. Unfortunately it seems about 30% of my scripts have been corrupted.

Haven't had time to view the other ones at this point. I own FM Developer 6.0 with the debugger, but am not going to buy FM Developer 7.0 to debug what they shoud have corrected.

The only reason I am considering upgrading is that I started scanning pdf files into my database about 6 months ago and it has now made it too large. I have recently set up a series of relationships and am simply moving the scanned pdfs over to the other databases as needed to keep the size down.

Your thoughts are appreciated

[infiniteg]

Why do you need to debug if you already know what the problem is? FileMaker Pro 7 is able to edit scripts, right?

BTW.. I'm not sticking up for FileMaker, I'm not happy with version 7 either.

[Ron F]

I have 20 related DB that were originally created in 2.1 and subsequently converted as FM released new products. I have had a few minor conversion issues, but was able to easily remedy the issues with a little work. I think FMP should have done a better job in releasing 7.0 it is buggy at least in the Windows version, but i think they're close to getting it right.