Super Container - Where to start?

[jeffginn]

I've been making Filemaker Pro databases from version 1 to 5.5. I wanted the relational capabilities of 4D but that didn't arrive until FM 7. Now I have been using FMPro 11 Advanced for several weeks and am pretty much back up to speed. Now I've undertaken a ten table database I want to host on the web that makes heavy use of container fields for images, excel, pdf, word.docs and so on. Mostly images of products though. I'm paying for a Filemaker hoster that is great (Point in Space) and everything functions perfectly but my staff can't upload anything into container fields. So I'm testing out 360 Works Super Container. I'm having success testing it on my local IWP but I just don't know where to start with web hosting using the 360 plugin. Can anyone share some simple straight-forward approaches or examples to integrating Super Container on a multi-table database for web use?

Filemaker web use is new to me but I have to get there.

Thanks much,

Jeff

[Smef]

SuperContainer works across WAN the same way it will work on your LAN. The number of tables in your database does not affect the functionality of SuperContainer either. You will use it the same way in all cases, specifying a URL for storing your files.

One thing you will need to consider when working with a more complex database is how you are organizing your file URLS. If you have a very simple database it might be fine to just go SuperContainer/Files/[RecordID]. With multiple tables, however, you would have recordID conflicts, so you will need to separate your documents a bit more, doing something like:

SuperContainer/Files/SitePhotos/[RecordID]

SuperContainer/Files/EmployeeDocs/[RecordID]

SuperContainer/Files/Legal/[RecordID]

and even more levels if you have multiple databases, just to avoid conflicts:

SuperContainer/Files/database1/SitePhotos/[RecordID]

SuperContainer/Files/database1/EmployeeDocs/[RecordID]

SuperContainer/Files/database1/Legal/[RecordID]

SuperContainer/Files/database2/SitePhotos/[RecordID]

SuperContainer/Files/database2/EmployeeDocs/[RecordID]

SuperContainer/Files/database2/Legal/[RecordID]

You will also need to make sure you install supercontainer on a machine which all of your users have access to. If you FM Server is public, but you install SC on a machine on your LAN then your users outside of your network won't have access to your server! I recommend deploying SC on the same machine as your server to make sure that all of your users can reach the IP of your FM and SC servers (since they will be the same!).

Let me know if you have any other questions.

[jeffginn]

Thanks much. Yes, it will be installed on the WAN once I buy the license. I only upload the FM file now but you're saying I have to upload a series of folders for each table, correct? I have 10 container fields and 10 tables so I would create a hierarchy of 100 folders? I guess that's what I'm not understanding. In my database (it's all products) and I have a tab set up in each table to allow inserting up to 10 images that can be viewed simultaneously. So I would replace all 10 container fields with SC or is it just one SC per table and it somehow shows all ten images together?

Thanks much! Can't wait to plug this in!

Jeff

[Smef]

If you have 10 containers per record/table and 10 different tables you would probably want to organize it like:

SuperContainer/Files/[database name]/[table or document type]/[record id]/[image number]/

So you would have

SuperContainer/Files/myDatabase/productPhotos/2357/1

SuperContainer/Files/myDatabase/productPhotos/2357/2

SuperContainer/Files/myDatabase/productPhotos/2357/3

SuperContainer/Files/myDatabase/productPhotos/2357/4

SuperContainer/Files/myDatabase/productPhotos/2357/5

SuperContainer/Files/myDatabase/productPhotos/2357/6

for your first six superContainer URLS for one table. Just like container fields, you can only have one file per SuperContainer URL.