Newbie general questions

[blips]

I'm playing with the trial version of Filemaker 5.5 trying to figure out if this will do what I need it to.

My situation:

I have two databases. One is an inventory file the other is a inventory transactions file. I'm trying to set up everything to people access these files through our intranet. I get it to work in Filemaker great but I can't seem to get it to work in the browers. (keep in mind I'm know less then a newbie). To simplify my situation: My inventory file has a part number, description and on hand quantity. The inventory transaction file tells me what to take out of the inventory file. When I enter a part number in the transaction file it does two things: Verifies that the part number is in the inventory file and shows the description.

Then I enter the amount of inventory I want to take out and it a button and it adjust the on hand quantity of the inventory file. (did I lose you yet?).

My problems:

The web does not seem to be real time. In FMP I enter the part number and it verifies if the part number is good and pulls the description. This does not happen on the web until you hit submit. Any way to get this to happen in real time?

The button for my script does not work. Is it possible to get a button to run a script through the web?

Does the documentation have all this info if/and when I buy the full version?

I'm sorry about my newness but I just need to know if FMP can do what I need to or if I should look elsewhere.

[Hammerton]

No need to apologize for newness, it happens to all of us sooner.

Q1 - I do not think there is any way for FMP to recalculate fields without hitting a submit. I know that there are Java applet/servlet ways of changing fields on the fly but I don't know if the changed fields can be referred back to FMP without a submit. I'm curious about why you need the result so instantaneously? If it's just for apperance sake you can always use the same file as the format file -that way you hit submit and see your change immediately on the same page that contained the original data.

Q2 - Scripts are launched using the

quote:

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-script

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action - a CMDL command. You launch them when you hit the submit button. Again, if appearances are important, change the value of the sumbit button to something like perform calculation, and use the same html file as the format file - that will make it look like the scripted actions/calculations are occurring in "real time"

Q3 - the refernce for this custom web page stuff resides in the web tools folder in a file called CDML reference.

Good luck.

[Keith M. Davie]

You fail to indicate if you are using Instant (can't do a thing with it) or Custom Web Publishing (a neat tool). Regardless, if there are near simultaneous requests for a script (or different scripts) over the web, you will encounter problems. These problems have been discussed on the cdml forum and should be of interest to you. Spend some time doing a little research on the three Internet forums. It will save you hours of time later.