Am I missing something (about concurrent IWP users)?

[mdrennan]

I keep reading over and over that my IWP solution through FMPro 11 will only support five concurrent users. I wanted to see what would happen if a sixth user tries to log in. I set up 10 users with full access privileges, each with their own username and password. I logged into 7 of the accounts simultaneously with no problem. I even went to the server and tried to close the database to confirm that there were 7 concurrent connections. Sure enough, it showed me all 7 users logged in and the "ask to quit" dialog option. What am I missing? What constitutes a "connection" in IWP and will having more than 5 connected cause any problems? Thanks very much for your experience.

[webko]

Yes - you're missing the difference between FileMaker Pro and FileMaker Server Advanced...

When you say you go to the server, then you are probably not using IWP from your copy of FileMaker Pro, but are using the Server Advanced to serve the files - and that can have up to 100 concurrent connections...

[mdrennan]

Thanks for the quick reply. Forgive me for being dense, but I guess I'm still missing it. I don't have Filemaker Server Advanced. I only have Filemaker Pro Advanced, which from everything I've read, is supposed to only have 5 concurrent users. When I say "server", I mean the local machine on which the database solution is being hosted. I am not hosting the solution on a third party site, just from my own home on my desktop computer. I was able to login remotely, using the IWP web interface, from many different user accounts that I set up under the sharing prefs for the database. I purposely did not log the sessions out to see how Filemaker would behave when someone tried to login above and beyond the 5 user limit. When I go to close the file itself on the home computer, it lists all of the users that are logged in via the fm/iwp protocol over the web. In this case, I was able to have seven users logged in simultaneously. I was expecting to see some sort of message that would not allow me to get beyond five concurrent sign ins. I'm going to be taking a solution live at the end of the month that will have about 70 users, and I wanted to make sure that these concurrence issues will not cause problems for my users. I just did not expect to be able to have more than 5 users simultaneously and wondered if anyone could explain why I seem to be able to.

[IdealData]

I too have tested this - the limit is 5 IWP users. You can also have 9 FileMaker users at the same time. So, in total up to 14 users plus the host.

Can you post a screen shot showing the connected users?

[mdrennan]

I screen shared into my home computer this morning after signing in with multiple web accounts from work. This is the message I get. I'm not overly concerned about a 5 user limit (it kinda sucks, but no big deal.) My concern is that I seem to be able to eclipse this documented limit, and is it going to adversely affect my solution? In other words, if I can actively have more than 5 users on at a time, is it going to prevent some users from committing records? Confused...

[Vaughan]

The key might be that the limit is on "concurrent" users?

[IdealData]

Quite obviously 7 CONCURRENT IWP users. I cannot explain, nor can I get the same result.

[comment]

I screen shared into my home computer this morning after signing in with multiple web accounts from work.

How many computers in total were used in this experiment?

[mdrennan]

Just one computer was used. Could this be the issue? One single IP address being viewed as one user, despite different logins? The main question I want answered is, what will my user see if they try to log in and there are too many users online at one time? Thanks everyone for your help.

[Vaughan]

Ah yes, concurrent users.... IIRC it works on IP numbers.

[IdealData]

Well, I tested by hosting AND connecting on my own computer. In order to login multiple times I had to quit my browser (Safari), which effectively leaves the previous connection still open. On my 6th login attempt Safari yielded a message to the effect that I had run out of licenses.

So, I still maxed out using only 1 IP address.

Still curious.