Online use of databases

[MikePR]

Hi:

I’m in the process of communicating a remote office with the main office databases. But this is my first time trying to do it online, to this date we have been using a full backup in a Mac Mini and a complex set of export/import scripts of almost 25 databases (FM Pro 6). I have several questions: It is better to use the Web sharing and accessing the files using the browser? Even when the user interface changes? or using a remote address to access the open databases in the FileMaker Server using a VPN. (I’ve try this already and it is slow). Is there a way of estimating how much bandwith it is needed (Download/Upload) based on the amount/size of databases.

Thanks,

Mike

[Brian C]

If your solution is not too complex, Instant Web Publishing can be useful in your situation. The server will handle all processing in these situations which will make things faster for the remote user.

The reason why FMP is slow over a vpn is because in v6, the client handles ALL processing and the server just sends the data over the network to the client to process. So if you do a search for example, the server has to send all the table data to the client first before it can be processed for a given search.

FMP Server 9 is nicer since it will process more of the search requests at the server side. But this would require you to upgrade your solution to v9.

[MikePR]

Thanks for the very helpful reply, but i'm still interested in finding out about the bandwith that I need to share my solution in an effective way. I already tested the 64kb frame relay and it takes over 25 minutes to log to the files and now we have DSL 3mbs download and supposed 512mbs upload and it is still slow. I know that ethernet 100bt is fine but that speed can not be achieved by our current service providers. And I think that the problem is in the upload and not the download, but up to were should we go? What are the big companies that are using FileMaker use for external communications?

[Brian C]

Larger organizations do not use the internet to have clients connect remotely. They either use citrix or some other sort of remote virtualization product or they use a batch upload/download data synchronization techniques.

The second solution means having your product hosted on servers physically at each of the locations and then having scripted processes and timed server processes that upload/download data from a primary master server.

It is complex and requires field level audit trails combined with timed batch scripted processes.

[Brian C]

Here is a post where I touch on this subject to a limited extent:

http://fmforums.com/forum/showtopic.php?tid/195113/post/289740/fromactivity/myposts/#289740

This will get you pointed in the right direction in any case I think.