Hi,

I'd like to connect to a Filemaker database using a remote client. The database's administrator has shared it using Instant Web Publishing; however, I'd like to be able to run SQL queries on it using a different application, because we'd like to be able to look at all the tables, not just the views that are set up through IWP, and we don't have Filemaker licenses for this remote location.

I'm familiar with using MS Access, but I understand that Access can't establish an ODBC connection to Filemaker--according to the documentation, it seems that I can only do this through MySQL or SQL Server. Before I make a decision about installing one of these packages, I'd like to get some advice:

-If I can't directly open the network drive on which the FM db resides, can I use the Instant Web Publishing URL to establish an ODBC connection?

-Should I install MySQL or SQL Server? For now, I don't need to host the data for other users, I just need to be able to query it for my own needs.

MS Access CAN establish a connection to FileMaker Server Advanced. The documentation that you have is for the ESS (External Sequel Sources) feature that lets FileMaker use MySQL, Oracle and MS SQL data natively.

But if you are outside FM and want to use FM data through ODBC then all you need is:

- FileMaker Server Advanced as the source

- the FM ODBC driver installed on your machine

- the administrator needs to make sure your account has ODBC privileges

- the firewall at the FMS machine's network needs to allow the ODBC traffic to flow through, or you need to connect through a VPN to the FMS network.

You should NEVER EVER be able to open a network share to the live FM files. If you can then that is a bad misconfiguration on the part of the FileMaker Server machine and those shares need to be turned off ASAP.