Remote Connectivity

[Baylah]

One of my clients wants to take it up a notch and I was wondering if anyone out there had ideas suggestions.

Client has 2 locations: One in Houstn, One in New Orleans. Currently each office operates it's own database sturcture that I developed at 2 seperate times. The offices are similar, but the DB's are unique because the business profle is a little differnt. Client now wants both offices to be able to connect into one "host" so all information is one location and accessed through remote connectivity.

I was thinking of usingup FM Server (8) and remote users connect in through a T1 line using Terminal Server.

I could develop a full blown web based solution but it is not in his budget as I would almost have to start from scratch.

I have 2 big concerns:

1: His DB has "ALOT" of images and they are necessary. The concern is performance sending the images back and forth.

2: Printing locally. I find FMP quirky on printing locally, let alone remote.

Is there a better way than terminal Services?

One last thing....this client also wants to move to Barcoding. Ideally, he would like to be able to track orders as they move through his process, storing, staging, production, finsihing, shipping.

Ideally he wants to create a barcode when an order is created and then put the "sticker" on the package. As the product moves it gets "wanded" at the various stages and FMP gets updated as to the products status. this sounds realtively easy to program and I know (at least I think I know) that FMP supports barcode. Has anyone out there done something siliar? Any suggestions on hardware? I have no experience in this and I told my client such, but he wants me to look into it because he is confident I can figure it out. (ha ha...Thank G-d for FMforums.com)

Any ideas, thoughs, suggestions would be very much appreciated.

Steve

[stanley]

Baylah:

FileMaker Server can handle all of that, and you might want to consider using a hosting service - which can save a fair amount of money. To answer your concerns:

1. Images. Imaging in FileMaker works fine so long as you optimize the use of images; for example, when a thumbnail is all that is being shown, you should use a small image (rather than having FMP resize the image), and then, when viewing the large image, use the larger image. This solves loads of bandwidth issues, and there are ways to speed things up beyond that, too.

2. Printing. FileMaker printing can run into problems when printing images - it's all about how the images are displayed, what their resolution is, and whether you are having FMP do any resizing, which is FileMaker's weakest aspect. If you know you are going to print images, make sure that they are entered into the system at the resolution and size which they will be printed at.

3. Barcoding. FileMaker is excellent with barcodes. There is a whole forum here on the topic (I'm the moderator) and you may want to dig through the posts to see what goes on. There are lots of basic questions which get answered often. I've done loads of systems with barcoding, labeling and tracking - just as you are suggesting - and it's pretty simple, once you get the concepts down. As far as hardware goes, my clients are all on the industrial side, and I recommend the HHP3800 series of scanners, which are rock solid. However, most scanners work as well as the next. You can barcode anything (I have clients who barcode every printout, so that you can scan whatever piece of paper you're looking at, and FileMaker will show you the status of the order, locations of items, etc. - very cool.)

HTH

-Stanley

[Steven H. Blackwell]

i was thinking of usingup FM Server (8) and remote users connect in through a T1 line using Terminal Server.

Before doing this, try a direct FileMaker Pro 8 client connection over the WAN first. WAN based performance is exceptionally good now. You may be able to avoid TS, Citrix, etc.

Steven