php, FM scripting language or something else.

[nickmay]

Hello,

I am looking for some feedback on the pros and cons of using php to handle a large data migration, rather than FileMaker's built in scripting language.

I have to populate a single multi-table FileMaker database by migrating data from five wildly different legacy single-table FileMaker databases.

The new database has to create new, complex relationships between data from the legacy tables. So I have to do quite a lot of analysis of the source data to see which record it should belong to on the target database.

Additionally the legacy tables do not map one to one on the fields of the tables in the new database.

I have created and tested an "empty" database in FileMaker with the relations I want and am now at the data migration / database consolidation stage.

I come from a solid php/MySQL background but am fairly new to FileMaker. I have FileMaker server Advanced 12.

My question:

Is a data migration/consolidation of this sort likely to be easier to do using FileMaker's built in scripting language, or is it likely to be easier to do by extracting data from the source databases using php, then applying it using php? Or should I be looking at a plugin?

Is it even possible to do using php? Is it possible to do just with FileMakers scripting language?

I am currently tempted to import all the data into MySQL tables and use those as "source" for creating and populating the tables I will need in the new database in MySQL, then importing the "final" version into my new FileMaker database. Are there any gotchas with that?

I don't yet have a feel for FileMaker's scripting capabilities and its string handling features. I need to do a certain amount of analysis of the contents of text fields, creating records and mappings on the basis of what they contain.

In my position which way would you go? Is there anything I particularly need to consider?

Any feedback - particularly from people familiar with both php and FileMaker scripting, would be much appreciated. Also any pointers to useful resources.

Thanks in advance.

Nick May

[jbante]

I'm confident FileMaker can do the job if you're willing to take the time to learn how to work with it. However, if just getting the job done is the more urgent priority, you may want to stick to the tools you are more comfortable with. One thing to keep in mind that the best of us forget on a regular basis deals with serial number primary keys. If you're migrating data to a FileMaker database using auto-entered serial numbers as primary keys, you need to re-set what the next serial number will be in each table after the import to avoid generating key collisions going forward.

[Lee Smith]

Hi Nick, and welcome to the Forum.

What do you mean by "legacy"?

Lee

p.s. Be sure and read the migration papers available at FileMaker's Site

p.s.s. I'd start with this one link