My company is acquiring another company and they have 2 applications in Filemaker.

Apparently it's in Filemaker 5.5 on the server and the clients are 5.5 or 6.0.

We are going to need to purchase the products.

1) Is the newest versions of the product backwards compatible with their database?

2) If not, we have a company that has these old versions of the product. Can I use Server 5.0 Server with their database - this is available from a company with activation codes.

3) What would be the server configuration for Windows for a 5.0 server?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

1) Is the newest versions of the product backwards compatible with their database?

The formats for Filemaker databases went through a radical change during the transition from FMv.6 to FMv.7. Thus FM v.7+ can not open up earlier filemaker documents. One big change is that FM files v.7+ were capable of holding multiple data tables in a single document. Previously each table had to be a separate document, even if the tables shared data via relationships.

If you try to open older FM files with newer software you will be asked whether you want the program to convert the file to the new format (which have the .fp7 suffix). Doing so will often give you a crude but workable solution. However, the tables will remain split into multiple documents. If these databases are going to remain in active use it is probably worth the extra effort to combine these into a single file as well as other steps to take advantages of filemakers new capabilities.

You should probably also take a look at the Migration tech briefs on the FMI website.