Unique Serial Number

[mhudd]

How would I create a unique serial number for an FM runtime?

[Vaughan]

TODAY function returns a date, and dates are stored as the number of days since 1/1/0001 AD.

BTW the Status(CurrentDate) function is better than TODAY. Read the help info for TODAY for details on it's limitations.

[sconolly]

I'm not sure of this, but if you put a "today" calculation in the file and defined the field type as number, you'd get a number result (730944=4/4/2002.

Use a concatenated field, e.g.

4789 & "today" & 9874.

This number would be different whenever the runtime was installed. You'd have to get your client to call for the serial number at time of installation.

The opening script for the file would compare the serial number to the concatenated field.

Of course, your client could perform multiple installations on the same day, but only on that one day.