I have been debating scraping 13 yrs worth of FM use b/c of the limitations of Filemaker. Is it true that even using CWP (fx.php for example) that server advanced will still only allow 100 simultaneous users? Can someone explain exactly what that means? Is it what it sounds like..that 100 users can access your server advanced hosted web site at once? If so that seems extremely limited!

If so, I wonder why anyone would still be using Filemaker as a backend to deploy web based systems? If you have to use middleware such as php anyway, why not then just use mysql instead as the backed?

Thanks in advance for any feedback. It is a very important issue that I am face with curently.

Here is a paragraph from an article by Steve Lane of Soliant Consulting < http://www.soliantconsulting.com/ > that will be published in FileMaker Advisor < http://www.filemakeradvisor.com/ > next month.

"Finally, and perhaps least well known, CWP is subject to the 100-connection limit even without the use of database sessions, or sessions of any kind. Each CWP request opens a new session on the Web Publishing Engine. That session exists only for the duration of that one request, and then expires. Sessions for straightforward operations, such as finds, sorts, adds, and deletes, should last for less than a second. Because not all visitors will be continuously querying the database, it's possible for far more than 100 users to visit a FileMaker Web site at the same time. But with longer-running queries, or an extremely heavy user load, it's possible to temporarily have 100 requests to the database open at a single time. If that's the case, FileMaker Server Advanced will deny the 101st request."

The entire article can be read when the issue is published.

If so, I wonder why anyone would still be using Filemaker as a backend to deploy web based systems? If you have to use middleware such as php anyway, why not then just use mysql instead as the backed?

Because for some it has a very nice GUI, which might be important for fluid data entry. And it has powerful calculation fields.

What web application do you have in mind that might have more than 100 simultaneous requests?

Unfortunately--for clarity's sake at least--none of this may be quite so cut and dried as it appears on the surface or as we have been led to believe by consulting with high technical resources.

As soon as I know more, I'll return to this thread.

Steven

MySQL's a great database if you need more connections, power, etc. - but don't expect a GUI.

- John

If you have to use middleware such as php anyway, why not then just use mysql instead as the backed?

mySQL will be your "define database", PHP your scriptMaker and HTML your layout mode... 3 vastly different skill sets each one with their own learning curve and quirks. You up for that? It's not a simple matter of dropping FM and being productive in those 3 areas right off the bat.

This is a very fundeamental question so I would spend some time figuring out if the 100-session limit will be a problem for you.