Ok. First of, I apologize if I'm posting this in the wrong forum but I thought this may be a good place since it seems to be getting much traffic.

I have developed a FM server based music creative and pitching system which has been running for many years and used in many different companies.

On of my clients who has been using it with much success has been bought out by another company. They want to use a SQL based system which, for one doesn't have near the functionality of what my system offers.

I have been charged with coming up benefits of FM vs SQL. Other than what my system offers and the ability to rapidly develop features as they need, I need some help.

I need to get them my pro FM vs SQL by early next week. Any thoughts on the matter? Otherwise I'll wing it...

Help!!!

Many thanks in advanced.

Michael

What is the reason they want it to become a SQL system?

SQL scalable, development long and generally very expensive. Requires a lot more maintenance and usually DBA's with certifications who think they're cool so they charge lots (i should go get mine lol) - useful for storing gigabytes of data for thousands of users. Licensed on a server basis (depends on SQL system used, MySQL is free) - might want to look exact numbers up though.

FileMaker - Development efficient and much more flexible. Requires little maintenance, useful for storing gigabytes of data for hundreds of users. I want to stress again that FileMaker is much more flexible in development - where something might take two weeks of dev in sql / some other front end, it can be done in less than a day in FileMaker. Cost per user, on per seat basis + server. Discounts are available for large purchases under VLA.

They think/feel it's more robust, faster, etc.

They don't need to server more than 50-75 people. It'll be minimally be accessed in NY, LA, Nashville...then scaled to UK, etc.

I would have servers mirrored on each continent and have them synch up at certain parts of the day.

There is also a SQL based system that, again, does a fraction of what my system does.

I think speed of data access is an issue.

But I honestly have a system that has been active for 4 years which runs bicoastally that has about 31k+ records. It server audio and video, imports and moves files to servers from iTunes, etc. Which runs pretty speedily. The only bottleneck that has ever occurred is due to the network pipe I was connected to.

Yeh - speed wise 31k, you're not going to see any difference really. Its when you get into the millions of records that you're gonna start seeing SQL pull up above FileMaker...

Well there really won't be millions. Maybe a few hundred thousand.

hmmm, is this going to run locally or over www - and if www how big are the pipes.

Broadband, possibly t1 but not sure.

it will run over internet but not using IWP.