Filemaker Server is a database server application. It is functionally similiar to Oracle or Sybase.

You still need Filemaker Pro client applications installed on each workstation in order to access the databases hosted on Filemaker Server.

Each copy of Filemaker Server will support up to 125 open databases and up to 250 simultaneous users.

If you have more than 125 databases you can simply run more servers in order to host all of the databases. I have 5 Filemaker server running here.

It is certified for Win2000. Goto http://www.filemaker.com/it/whitepapers.html for a bunch of white papers and best practices documents. Lots of good information here.

Our server specialist didn't yet approved W2K as mission critical server

Kurt is correct in his description and analysis. I have several clients using W2K server as their OS for FM Server 5.5 that runs as a service. Do NOT use any flavor of XP or W2K PE. Use W2K Server. FM Server 5.5 also runs as a daemon on Red Hat Linux for the brave of heart, and on OS X as a daemon also. I would not run it as an application on Mac OS 9. On Mac OS X there are a few issues yet to be resolved.

Up to 125 files (plus the three admin files) and up to 250 guests. TCP is the approved protocol; it is the only cross-platform protocol.

Use a dedicated machine with an UW SCSI or hardware RAID drive; do not use ATA or IDE drives. Around 256 to 384 MB RAM is plenty for both the OS and FM Server.

DO NOT enable any sort of file sharing on any machine running FM Server. And if the machine ever had ASIP on it; wipe the drive to 0 and reinstall a core OS.

See the Best Practices paper on the FMI Web site.

HTH

Old Advance Man

One other point:

FMI offers competitive pricing on volume license agreements. See their web site or call them.

Old Advance Man

Hello Everyone!

Glad to be here for the first time!

We're planning on purchasing a filemaker server 5.5 edition. I'm not at verse on this product although I do know it's good for contacts.

Does anyone uses it on a windows 2000 server? if, so, what else can you do with it? I went to the features section of the product, and it mentions something about "delivers accelerated networked database performance for up to 125 hosted files". My understanding is that only up to 125 files at any time. Or is it more like 125 hosted times at the most at an specific time?

Also, yes, this is the server software, where contacts, database will be hosted, what about the clients: do I need to separately buy a client to access the database? or are the clients for PCs and Macs included when buying the 250 users license?

As if that wasn't enough, are there any features not supported on either platform that are great to have?

Thanks in advance ladies and gentleman!

Thank you!

Thanks for the input guys.

It seems that with FM, a number of different databases can be run. We are mainly looking into it for contacts management. We can only use act on the mac platform.

Question is, anyone merely using it for contacts management? If so, how different is it from act?

What other sorts of DBs can be hosted on FM?

Thanks Again!!!

Act is an application that is written on top of a database system. The same kinds of things can be written on top of Filemaker Pro.

Anything can be stored in a Filemaker database. Check out the solutions listed on the Filemaker, Inc website for some of the various solutions.