Need help urgently with Accounts info!!!

[Kent Searight]

Hi all,

I'm quickly approaching a deadline for a certain phase of a project I'm working on and I can't seem to find much helpful info on this topic. Here's the situation:

I'm developing a database that will have thousands of users (customers). The users will input their data via kiosks in multiple locations (but never exceeding FM limitation of subsequent users). Some sensitive personal and financial information will be stored in the db, so security of data is very important. These users will all be assigned the same privilege set that limits their access to their own records.

Here are the questions:

1.) Is there any limit to the number of accounts in FM8? I can't find a single specification on this.

2.) Are there any negative consequences to having thousands of accounts, like diminished performance, etc.?

3.) If creating thousands of accounts ins't a good option, what is a good option?

The finished solution will likely expand and I want to make sure I'm not painting myself into the proverbial corner with regard to future development.

Many thanks in advance to anyone who can offer some advice!

[Ohgo_Ohgo]

Hi !

Matt Petrowsky at his website http://www.filemakermagazine.com

has a perfect article exactly solving Your problem.

“User Controls - Managing what users can do”

But You must be a subscriber to download it.

the Principe is that inside Your application You have a few extra files and relationships and You define Your users there and which group of privileges the user has.

e.g. just being able to see own records

using this method it is also much easier to manage Your big number of users in Filemaker directly and not in the account and privileges section

hope it helps

[Ohgo_Ohgo]

Hi !

I am sorry but I forgot You still have to set up all Users in accounts ... so realy sorry no solution for Your problem .

[Kent Searight]

Something I should clarify is that users will be able to create their own accounts. I'm fine with scripting that and I'm also fine with controlling access based on account name. I'm just questioning whether or not creating 1000's of accounts has some unforeseen consequence that I may regret later. I've looked in every FM resource I can find, even Blackwell's FileMaker Security: The Book, and I come up with nada, zilch!

[Reed]

I have a file with 300 active accounts, and haven't had any problems. It's going to be a while before I get into the thousands...

I guess you could script creating 5000 accounts in a loop and then do a bunch of scripted relogins and open/closes with the different accounts to see if you notice any problems.

I'd say external authentication might be the ticket, but I don't know how you'd let users create their own accounts this way.

[Kent Searight]

Thanks, Reed. As I write, my prototype is looping throught the creation of 25,000 accounts. I made it up to 15,000 previously so I know that that number of accounts is possible, at least. I can't foresee my client needing that many accounts for a very long time, if ever, so this should be a safe quantity for testing. I'll post my results.

You've never heard any FileMaker specs on this subject either, I assume?

[Kent Searight]

Well, FileMaker allowed me to create 25,000 user accounts (I'd still like to know the limit) and here's what I found...

The only slowdown in performance I'm noticing is when I click OK on the Accounts & Privileges dialog, even if I don't make a change...that can bring FileMaker to its knees for about 5 minutes before the dialog closes. Aside from that, I ran some scripts that were dependent on the account name and I couldn't notice any difference.