FM7 Developer upgrade to FM9 Server

[pjdodd]

Does anyone know of any posts/users/discussions where a filemaker 7 database (standalone) has been converted to become a filemaker 9 server database (accessed by many users)?

It would really help if there specific information that relates to the pitfalls and known issues in performing such a change.

Thanks.

[Ender]

For the most part, FM9 is backward compatible with FM7 (it uses the same file format) and runs everything the same.

But there are often unexpected differences between running a file as stand-alone and running the same file in a hosted, multi-user environment. Particularly, the behavior of global fields in the way they retain (or don't retain) their values from session to session. There are also record locking issues to be aware of.

[Vaughan]

"But there are often unexpected differences between running a file as stand-alone and running the same file in a hosted, multi-user environment."

A lot depends on how various processes are designed, some by their nature will fail in multi-user. Not because of any issue with FM server, but simply because the process itself doesn't play well with other people and doesn't scale past 1.

For example, marking a found set of records. The obvious way is to set a flag field in each selected record (and clear the flag in the omitted records). This works fine for one user, buit if there is more than one user the flags are going to be constantly set and cleared, and it won't work.

In general for multi-user databases, avoid any process that relies on flagging individual records. Instead, store the record ids into a global field.

This is completely separate from the issue of "backwards compatibility" between FMP 7 and FMP 9