FM4 photos

[Neville]

We run a small real estate office on island in Queensland (www.cynthiadykerealty.com.au). Have been using FM for appprox 5 years, FM2 then FM3 now FM4 for managing our listings, feature cards etc on 4 Win98 PC's, peir to peir network. Installed all updates to bring to V3. For window/feature cards we previously printed cards from fm and glued on photos. Now we are going digital camera. Need to print cards complete with photo out of FM. Tried storing photos in database, continually crashes (now know why - 44mb database for approx 60 photos) when FM says maximun 32mb). Have tried every which way to store photos externally and only store reference in FM. Tried JPG, BMP, PSP. PSP and BMP store reference but either can't get photo to print from FM, wants to open the OLE application (eg IE4), or stores complete photo in FM. PSP says storing reference but shows photo and must be actually storing photo as database up to 11mb for 8 photos.

In simple terms how can i store 100's of photos for printing out of FM for window/feature cards without actually storing the photos in FM and causing huge database and consequence crash. Help appreciated. (getting that desperate am contemplating redeveloping in ACCESS - yuk!)

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[Vaughan]

FMP4 files can be up to 2,000 MB in size, so I don't think that that's a problem yet. I'd wager that the PC is running out of memory. How much RAM does it have -- 32 MB or 64 MB? Upgrade it to at least 128 MB or more if you're going to start working with lots of graphics in container fields.

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TechInfo Article 104637: Technical Specifications of FileMaker Pro 4.0

[Neville]

Thanks Vaughan

Of the two main PC's that use the database all day, one (P166) has 32mb and the other (P450) has 96mb so possibly this is right. We get that many crashes that I have set up a script on exit that makes a backup for each day of the month. Usually have to do recover approx once a month. The main database is only 3.5mb (approx 1100 rows), the photos is 44mb (~70 rows), although not on the layout that the people work in all the time. If it is a memory problem might I get around it by only opening the picture file when needed and immediately shut after printing the window card?, even opening it minimised?

(I couldn't get to the article you mentioned- keeps crashing at the moment, but recall seeing an article that stated a 32mb limit (I thought for a file) - will try later.)

I am still not sure if you are saying that there is no way round printing a photo from

another file other than actually storing it/imbedding it in the FM DB.??

I can update the 96mb PC, has modern memory, but the other is old style memory which is virtually impossible to source so really would like a solution that I can implement on existing hardware.

Again comments appreciated

[Vaughan]

I seem to remember that FMP2 (yes version 2) had a 32 MB file size limit. FMP4 certainly has no limit, besides you state that you have alredy exceeded it anyway.

Tell me how you are sharing the databases: are people opening the files by connecting to a shared volume, or are the dbs "hosted" on one machine and people accessing them through FileMaker Pro clients?

I ask because the former method (opening the file on a shared volume) is *not* the recommended method and many people have experienced problems sharing databases this way.

[Neville]

Thanks again Vaughn

The DB is located on one pc ("the server") which shares all its files inc the FM db to two other PC's.

The other 2 pcs that access it I guess do it as clients as when the first one opens the db they get the message "you are about to become the host...... do you want to continue or copy to local drive for better performance...". When the second PC opens the DB they get an information message " opening db as guest of PC1". Am using IPX/SPX protocol as couldn't find way with FM to use the native Win network protocol.

We get weird messages before it crashes - eg yesterday one PC couldn't read db (message - corrupted DB use recover command) when tried to recover said couldn't read disk that db was on, yet i was able to copy db to local drive and opened fine.

Is it possibly because FM is trying to handle a huge file over the network?

(PS the memory issue is going - had power surge and had one PC blow up so had to get new PC so both PC's will have 128mb in next couple of days.)

[Vaughan]

That's part of the problem then. You need a permanent FMP host machine.

Ideally a server is a machine dedicated to the task -- that is, it gets left alone, nobidy sits at the keyboard and uses it for anything. Make it the fastest with most memory. You need a copy of FMP to be running on the machine with all the shared files open.

Now people use the shared databases by either opening FMP on their machine and selecting HOsts form the open command, or preferably an "opener" file is created that people just click on and it does all the work.

There is a FAQ on creating opener files, it's at...

http://www.fmforums.com/ubb/Forum8/HTML/000006.html

I believe that this will solve a lot of your problems.

[LiveOak]

Is there a copy of FM on each machine? I get the strange impression that all machines are launching the same copy of the FM application off the host machine. If so, this is absolutely the definitive way of reducing FM to total instability (and slowing everything to a crawl)!

-bd

[Neville]

Thanks

Yes there is a copy of FM on each machine. I have reconfigured office PCs and now have a new P633/128MB 20gb HDD as "server", although it is used for other applications (don't have luury at moment of a dedicated server). The other PC that accesses the listing program is a P450, 96mb memory, with FM installed. Following Vaughns advise have setup a "starter" FM application on this PC (although I can't get it to message when the server DB is not up - I must have stuffed somthing up, I will recheck)as per his previous advice.

I am in the process of loading the photos database as a new DB and copying/pasting in the photos (they are jpeg but with FM the only way I can get them into the DB is by copying and pasting the images from another application ie Paint shop pro - hence the huge database size.) I would really like to hold the reference only and only display the actual images on a particular layout that is used for printing the window cards.

I only have a few images in at the moment - I will see how it goes when it gets up to 30-40mb as it this is where it used to crash before. - My suspicion is that the problem is not fixed because when I opened up the old photo database on the weekend I got the same old - DB corrupted use recover command etc etc, even though I was opening it on the new server.

Will see how it goes......

[Neville]

Thanks for the help

Now have system working and no problems. Approx 170 photos for DB of approx 200mb and no problems. Photos put into container field by cut/paste from Photoshop. Noi crashes so suggestions must be working. Only query is why are the source photos only 12-14mb(compressed jpegs) yet DB 200mb?? How can I hold only link in FM, yet view and print out of FM as required - would cut db size down considerably.