A FAQ

[fishbone]

If you have a smaller database (where small is defined as less than 5 files and 50 MB of data), would FM Server be necessary?

Couldn't I just put the files on a shared folder and the 4 users who use it just run off that?

What are some advantages and disadvantages? The reason I ask is because I am proposing FM to my company and I don't know if I should include FM server in it.

Also, if anyone happens to know, I am looking for a live connection (real-time) to a SQL database. Can this be done? Pretty much every record that goes into FM also inserts into the SQL database. Vice Versa too. Every record that is inserted into the sql database through a different program automatically be entered into FM (real-time).

I don't expect one person to know the answers to all of this, but if you know anything about the above mentioned, please leave your input as it is greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

[Wim Decorte]

Definitely not in a shared folder! Doing that is the #1 cause for corrupted files. Filemaker has its own sharing mechanism and it does not need the OS level sharing (in fact it can and over time will conflict with it).

If you're not using FMS then one machine needs to have the files on its hard disk in a non-shared folder. That machine needs to open the files first, all other machines would then open the files through "open remote" just like they would if the files were hosted on FMS.

Cheaper but you're missing out on one very important benefit of FMS: live backups. With peer-to-peer the guests need to be kicked off before the files can be backed up (don't ever try to backup the files while users are still connected or the host machine still has the files open, it will corrupt your files).

Obviously if the host machine is doing other tasks than hosting the FM files, performance will degrade for all connected users.

It all comes down to how important the data and the solution is: if it were all lost how much would it cost? Or how much would the cost be when a full day of work/data is lost?

[Steven H. Blackwell]

[color:red]Pay attention to what Wim said.

Steven