syncing Mobile > Laptop > Server over VPN

[mattlight]

Hi all,

Happy New Year!

Long time no visit to the forum and am pleased to see how much it has improved in it's look and useability.

Has anyone had any experience in Filemaker solutions which can either work on a PDA (using Mobile) or/and a laptop which then syncronises with the Filemaker server using a remote access (VPN)?

I am writing a sales order system for sales reps out on the road. Most of them will have laptops that are not connected to the Internet whilst on the road. Some will be lucky enough to have PDA's and a copy of Filemaker Mobile.

The eventual destination for the data collated by the sales reps will end up on the database which is held on the server.

What I want to find out is if:

1. Is it possible for PDA users to flush data from the PDA to their laptop and then keep all records that they have entered; local on their machine and then send a copy of all new records to the server?

I don't know how complicated this is so I am looking for general advise here - it will be the first time I am going into the realms of mobile and remote user capabilities.

2. Has anyone tried to intergrate Filemaker database with SAP?

At the moment, MSA has been sacked as a software solution for sales reps - good riddence! MSA, however used to do a thing called CONTRANNS which imported the data to SAP to action all of the purchases, etc.

Does anyone know what type of file SAP is wanting as an import?

These are very vaige questions I know - if there is a resource that I should study, please point me in the right direction.

Thanks for any help you can give!

Matt

[mattlight]

Hi guys,

Is this in the wrong forum or does no-one know what I'm on about? I appreciate any help with this!

Thanks

[mattlight]

Someone please reply - I can't believe no-one knows what I'm on about here!

Thanks for at least looking.

Kind Regards,

Matt

[Wim Decorte]

Don't think nobody knows what you're talking about. This is a volunteer thing. People have to first see your post, decide the topic is something they want to write about, *and* have the time to do it.

Here goes:

1) Sure: you can use FileMaker Mobile to synch records to a local file. Check the FM web site for the FMM specs. It's a limited application but it just may do what you want. If you want something more robust, then you'll have to find or write middleware between the PDA app and FM on the laptop.

To synch back to server you can write something yourself. The hardest part is in incorporating the rules on what to do when a record has been changed on the server and also changed on the laptop. If you want to buy an excellent off-the-shelf solution that does the synching, look into SyncDek and integrate it in your solution.

2) SAP is a front-end enterprise system with many modules (CRM, Accounting,...). You need to find out what underlying database is being used. Often it's Sybase but it could be Oracle or some others.

Technically there is no reason why you couldn't communicate with the underlying SAP databases. ODBC, JDBC, scripted import/export (CSV, TAB, DBF,...). But the problem usually is that the SAP admins will not allow you do touch the tables directly because you risk screwing up the integrity rules imposed by the front-end. Talk to the SAP admins and figure something out. They will be able to write an SAP import routine to take in just about any FM export format.