I haven't yet purchased Filemaker because I don't yet know what tools I'll need to do the integration, but given that I've read there is SQL integration with Filemaker, I was hoping someone could give me a hint on how to proceed. I currently have a very archaic setup with a webhost that offers me Linux webhosting and PHPMyAdmin access. Unfortunately, PHPMyAdmin has difficulty handling my tab delimited text files which I currently export from Microsoft Excel and parsing it so that it imports into the SQL database. Since I don't know enough about PHPMyAdmin, and neither does my webhost, I'm sort of stuck with the odd process of having copy/paste into BBEdit, remove the tabs, sort, and export to a flatfile textfile that a PHP Parser is able to view. My database consists of 20 textfile tables with tabs removed, with a total right now of 1550 records. Some records have fields as long as 2000 characters. A total of 10 columns is common through the tables, and it has a variably increasing index sometimes increasing 2 to 30 values at a time with some tables not starting their index at 1 but a much later value like 200.

1. Are there any text field types with no length limits I can give an SQL database?

2. Can Filemaker run a mathematical query like =3-LOG10(E33+1)+1 and plug that in another field?

3. Can Filemaker be set to sync with an SQL database on a Linux server without having to deal with PHPMyAdmin? What addon tools are the least expensive?

Are there any pitfalls I might run into?

1. Text fields in filemaker have length limit of 2 GB of text per field. The Entire database file has a size limit of 8 TB.

2. Filemaker has a wide variety of mathematical functions.

3. You can use ODBC to synchronize data between filemaker and any data source to which you have access to drivers. The import records... and execute SQL commands allow data to be moved in either direction.

There is a downloadable 30-day demo that you can use to see if what you want to accomplish is possible.

Thank you. I was having trouble with the built-in Tiger ODBC administrator hooking up into my MySQL server. Is that what I should be using? It seems to want SQL servers that are Windows Centric. Or is there a way to get it to recognize MySQL on a server over the internet?

One method I use is a combination of FM/Applescript/PHP to "sync" the data between FM and MySQL.

One problem you may be having with the TAB delimited files is the End-Of-Line markers. You may need to convert them from Mac to Linux before the upload to phpMyAdmin.

The ODBC may work if the hosted MySQL is not restricted to "localhost".

Good Luck.

Garry

You might want to try the drivers from actual technologies:

http://www.actualtechnologies.com/products.php

I've had good luck with their SQL Server driver using FMP 5.5, 6, 7 and 8.

Unfortunately, some web-hosting businesses will not allow remote connection, via ODBC, to the MySQL databases :

Good Luck.

Garry