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In article <1992Aug11.201850.8208@u.washington.edu>, lcornell@milton.u.washington.edu (Linda Cornell) writes:
|> Hi there,
|> 
|> We're thinking about purchasing Filemaker Pro along with a special
|> software application that was developed in it.  
|> 
|> Our current office set up is some SIs, SEs, and a Plus running on an
|> Appletalk/Appleshare network with a SE as a server.  Everything is
|> Sys7 except the server and the Plus which are 6.0.7 (I think).
|> 
|> The application is a "database" that everyone will need to share.
|> 
|> I'm a novice to Macs, and spend most of my time with PCs, Novell, Unix,
|> etc.  So any suggestions, guidance, comments will be greatly appreciated!
|> 
|> Thanks in advance for your time!
|> 
|> Linda Cornell
|> lcornell@u.washington.edu
|> University of Washington
|> Office of Research

Be VERY Careful of setting up a FM Pro database across a network.
Small abberations in your network can cause catasrophic data losses.
Claris' suggestion is to have a dedicated server for FM Pro [sic]. I don't
know about you, but we didn't want to shell out for a Mac *just* for
FM Pro.  In my experience, and I am only one datapoint, FM Pro is
NOT very stable over a shared network, especially if multiple users
are sharing the file simultaneously.

Just my $0.02 worth.
-- 

David G. Simmons	"A little rudeness and disrespect can elevate a
davids@lanl.gov		meaningless interaction to a battle of wills and
			add drama to an otherwise dull day."
						-Calvin
If I said it, LANL didn't..."If you weren't such a muttonhead, you might have 
thought of it yourself!" (Calvin, again...)

-- 

David G. Simmons	"A little rudeness and disrespect can elevate a
davids@lanl.gov		meaningless interaction to a battle of wills and
			add drama to an otherwise dull day."

davids@gardener.lanl.gov (David Simmons) writes:

>Be VERY Careful of setting up a FM Pro database across a network.
>Small abberations in your network can cause catasrophic data losses.
>Claris' suggestion is to have a dedicated server for FM Pro [sic]. I don't
>know about you, but we didn't want to shell out for a Mac *just* for
>FM Pro.  In my experience, and I am only one datapoint, FM Pro is
>NOT very stable over a shared network, especially if multiple users
>are sharing the file simultaneously.

Unfortunately, it's very difficult for a database server on the mac to
be stable when someone is also using the machine to run other applications,
especially since the memory space is unprotected and any other program
running on the machine can write into the server's memory partition.

Unlike some multiuser database programs, FileMaker does not require
that you dedicate a machine to be a server, but doing so can help
improve performance and reliability.

Brian
-- 
Internet: skip@claris.com                 AppleLink: SCHIPPER1

In article <1992Aug11.220902.13383@newshost.lanl.gov> davids@gardener.lanl.gov
(David Simmons) writes:

>Be VERY Careful of setting up a FM Pro database across a network.
>Small abberations in your network can cause catasrophic data losses.
>Claris' suggestion is to have a dedicated server for FM Pro [sic]. I don't
>know about you, but we didn't want to shell out for a Mac *just* for
>FM Pro.  In my experience, and I am only one datapoint, FM Pro is
>NOT very stable over a shared network, especially if multiple users
>are sharing the file simultaneously.

We use FM Pro as well over a network, and I won't even begin to go into the
snail pace responses that occur from running the program over a network, but I
have found one difference between our database hosted by a server as opposed to
by the first user to get to it.

If a user opens QuickMail in our Department while hosting FM Pro (actually, any
dialog box for that matter) it appears to completely stop FM Pro's activity. 
This in turn causes users who have logged onto the database remotely to wait,
and wait, and wait until the individual that has hosted to close these said
windows.

On the whole (althogh you didn't ask for my opinion of the package) FM seems to
be a good starter database program, but if you need versatility, you'll soon
find yourself looking for a replacement as we're doing.  Claris, while the
Windows platform is important, I think it crucial that you refine the
networking ability of FMPro.  Even with an FX as a database server, the remote
user sees no real speed increase from normal operations.

---------
Patrick Parker
LAN Manager - University of Minnesota
pharmacy@epx.cis.umn.edu

On our network we have a dedicated File Server (of course) and a dedicated
Mac IIci running FileMaker Pro (1.0v3, eagerly waiting for 2.0). We have had
_extremely_ good experience with this configuration. The question I have
is, anybody using this type of configuration, the machine has 5 MB of RAM.
What is the best way to allocate this. Currently I have a 768k RAM cache set
up, and am giving FM Pro upwards of 3 MB. It is sharing 7 databases on the
network. Is there a better way to configure this memory? for optimum
performance of course.

Thanx

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|  Jamie Thingelstad                 | Ronald Reagan: A Triumph of the         |
|  thingles@alexander.cs.umn.edu     |                         embalmer's art. |
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