FMSA access to shared folder data

[the_kid]

Hello,

My apologies if this isn't in right the area. We have a database on FMSA 11 (WIN). We also have a Win2K8 server that is holding scanned PDF documents that we now like to integrate into the database. Is is possible for FileMaker to somehow connect and display the contents of a shared directory? We don't have the resources right now for something like SuperContainer...

Ideally, we would like to "relate" the two systems. Example: In the database we have a field which holds the value 154-1234. On the shared drive we have many folders, but would like to view the contents of only X:\Scanned\154-1234\.

I've looked at OLE linking, but I either don't grasp the concept or it's not working the way I think it should.

Thanks in advance.

[Wim Decorte]

I think you really need SuperContainer to make this easy. You'll easily spend the equivalent in development time to come up with an approach that will be much more vulnerable.

Your biggest challenge is that the X drive needs to be mapped exactly as X from each workstation. Mapping it to FMS will do you no good. So the permissions need to be just right and the mapping can never fail.

Your best bet is to have global container and when the user wants to see a document, then grab the file from the network share and put it in the global container.