My question is: are there any problems that my crop up in the future with my current system? Is this system compatable with 10-25 users on a LAN? Is there a better way?

I have a LAN with several guests connected to FMP5Server host computer (all macs) for the FMP5 database files, one of which holds the "referrence" for scanned images. The images are scanned by one of the guest computers with vistascan software and saved on a separate computer (scan host) that is on the LAN and the reference to is is saved into a containor field in one of my database files. Before anyone can connect to my database from one of the host computers, they first have to get the shared files (containing the images) onto their desktop. So far this has worked well, but recently I got the message that the folder containing the scanned images (on the "scan host) was full (already contained about 600 scannned images) so I created another folder on the "scan host" into which the scanned images were sent. So far so good, but I don't know if I will get into trouble as the number of scanned documents grows.

All critiques and thoughts are welcome about any better way to get many documents (can get to be thousands of pages) viewable via FMP5 database from many guests.

I'm not aware of a limit to the number of files in a folder. Is your disk full? What server software are you running on your file server? If you are using a Mac with built-in file sharing, I would recommend AppleShare IP 6.x instead. It is much more stable with multiple users in an environment where something like pictures are shared.

-bd

The servers for the scanned documents and for the FMP5 solution are both G4 running OS 9.2.1 and both have over 15 GB of free space on the hard drives. The "scan server" has file sharing on while the "Database server" does not as it is running FM5 Server. Once the scans are made they are saved as tiff files and put into the shared folder from the "scan host" G4 that resides on the desk top of one of the "guest G4's" that is used for scanning the documents in and for accessing the database. Each scan takes up from 128-280 K depending on the quality of the print.

With this additional info, do you think I still need the AppleShare software?

[ December 12, 2001: Message edited by: old sneekers ]

Several items here. First, if you do use ASIP be SURE BEYOND ALL HELL that you do not--repeat do NOT--put it on the FileMaker Server CPU. It will trash your databases.

Second, you could solve all this by importing the actual images rather than just the refernces. But if you want to import the references, be sure that the image server is mounted onto the desktop of the individual user. If you are all Mac OS, you can test for its presence with an AppleScript as part of the startup process, and actually mount it if need be. Or you can require users to mount it manually.

HTH

Old Advance Man