KKmaj Posted June 13, 2002 Share Posted June 13, 2002 I am designing a FMPro 5.5 set up for a small charity who's needs reflect membership, information storage such as affiliation within the charity, factual dietary information, sales and product data and documents stored within container fields, advertiser information for their in-house publications and so on. We have an accounts databse package, so all invoicing is created seperatley. I have come to the conclusion that I need 18 .fp5 files created. The relationships set up between them are mostly straight forward with the bulk of data being stored within an 'address' .fp5 file. This file also stores its affiliation within the charity as flagged fields (advertiser/member/special contact etc) I propose to interact with all of these realtional files through a singular .fp5 file which will act as a 'front end' to all of the related files, through a series of scripted layouts designed for each sections needs. Each of the 4 main sections of the charity maintain specific functions and roles, they each in turn access a .fp5 file created specificly for their needs, as most fields created within their unique files will not be required by the other users on the network. The central 'address' file will have apporxiamtely 8,000 + records which we expect to rapidly grow. The other section based files will probably range from 100 - 4,000 records dependant on the sections function within the organisation. Each new record created will be assigned a incremental serial value, this value and the address data will be updating an accounts databse using ODBC only when the user has completed the record and requested an update. As my use of FileMaker as an application is relatively new and my use of mac networks is also quite fresh, do any of the board visitors know of any system limitations or software limitations that FileMaker Pro 5.5 might present with this configuration ? The heaviest used and searched file will be the 'address' as it will be accessed by all of the office. Although they will only be accessing records relevant to their department through lookup and searches for ammendment or updates. There are more related features of this set up, but I don't feel that they are totally necessary to explain or get a feel for this layout. I have considered joining the DEVCON this august. I understand relational systems and like FileMaker Pro as an application, giving consideration to pursuing this line of work, any DEVCON visitors able to offer some light ? Ket Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kurt Knippel Posted June 13, 2002 Share Posted June 13, 2002 Nothing you have said thus far would even make Filemaker burp. I have worked on systems with upt to 5 servers, hundreds of files and millions of records. Devcon is a GREAT idea! While I am not sure that you will see your issues specifically addressed, it will give you great exposure to the breadth of the Filemaker community. I have been to all but one and each and every one was well worth it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KKmaj Posted June 14, 2002 Author Share Posted June 14, 2002 Thanks for the re-assuarance there Kurt, I was pretty sure that it was stable enough, so your response will help put my clients at ease. I think the idea of relational database structures give clients panic attacks sometimes. As for DEVCON, I am pondering this very seriously. Not so much for the specific details for this project but as you say to be exposed to the FM developer community and learn the environment, its very tempting (i'm in the UK so its a big decision as to whether I can afford to travel out for the conf.) Anyhows thanks for the feedback, I know I'd find it useful. Has anyone ever used the web companion feature within a Relational FM set up ? I tested this out yesterday and found it very slow - maybe I just had the settings upside down. I use: PowerBook G4 512Mb OS X FileMaker 5.5 through Internet Explorer 5.1 I may try this through a PC <-> Mac set up Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kurt Knippel Posted June 14, 2002 Share Posted June 14, 2002 In this specific case a Powerbook is not a great web serving platform, if for nothing else than the typcially slow harddrives. I use a Powerbook day in and day out, but I would never consider using it for any kind of server. WebCompanion is not the fastest way to access Filemaker via the web anyway, but it is the easiest to configure and get working. If your needs are for more performance you can also look into Lasso, and I am sure that there are other methods as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KKmaj Posted June 15, 2002 Author Share Posted June 15, 2002 my use of the powerbook was merely for testing the webcompanion. The idea was to set up access to the database via the intranet of the organisation. The server they have will be host to the filemaker files. Being a G3 Server with an upgraded G4 processeor card. I think it will just be simpler if they access the databse via the filemaker application. Performance is the highest priotiy in this project. I'll look into Lasso but I think you've helped me decide on my course of action. Webcompanion is a nice feature yet the processing weighs heavy against the response time I need. Thanks Kurt. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CaelC Posted September 4, 2002 Share Posted September 4, 2002 I'm about 3 months late with my reply here ... but ... You can get satisfactory test results out of the G4 if you are using it as a true "server" and access the files from a "client" machine. If you try to access them via IE from the same machine you are serving web companion from it will be painfully slow. You'll see speed increase at least a dozen times when set up using a "client" machine to access. This is more true to what will happen in your final web installation. I'm not sure why it's so slow when testing on the same machine but it is unbearably slow. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anatoli Posted September 6, 2002 Share Posted September 6, 2002 Mac OS is without preemptive multitasking and it is using just sort of "collaborative" one. Mac X should be different ball game. Or get an NT/W2k/XP Pro I am running 10-20 applications plus I am serving FM to the web for testing purposes to another developers on my $500 HW. And it is fast on web. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CaelC Posted March 26, 2003 Share Posted March 26, 2003 Yes, Mac OS is perfect for doing all that you mention there but there is some sort of circular reference that isn't resolved properly when you are testing on the same machine you are serving from. Testing from secondary machines is no problem. Not sure where it stands with OSX. Cael. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anatoli Posted March 26, 2003 Share Posted March 26, 2003 I just recall, that when I was using PM4400 to do my first FM driven website, I didn't have any 'sort of circular reference' problems on Mac OS 8.1 It was slow machine and crashed often from GoLive, but the speed was the same for local or remote FM-WC. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CaelC Posted March 28, 2003 Share Posted March 28, 2003 I was using a G4-400. When you try to pull up pages on the same machine they are hosted on = painfully slow. When accessing from a remote machine, it was 10X to 20X faster. I haven't tried this in the last couple of years since I have a dedicated CoLo machine using Lasso now. Cael. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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