FileMaker Server 7 Advanced

[amdnVuser]

I work for a department at a small-medium university, and an administrator wants to convert virtually all of our forms online (currently in PDF, Excel, or Word, filled out, and sent to our office) to interactive, HTML forms that collect the data and submit them to a database. Most tables/forms won't have more than a few hundred records, but a few probably will. Before I was in the loop, they purchased FileMaker Server 7 Advanced for the back end (I would have recommended MySQL w/PHP or just a bunch of Access DB's w/ASP since we don't have our own SQL Server or Oracle Server), and I was wondering if anyone here has had any experience with FileMaker DB's and/or their Web publishing engine. I've read through the documentation, and as far as I can tell, to truly get the most robust results, you must use their XSLT generator to integrate their DB's with a Web front end. Since DreamWeaver (pretty much the only Web design software we have) doesn't recognize XSLT files, I have to do all of the HTML formatting by hand. Thus, again, does anyone have any experience with FileMaker Server 7 Advanced and FileMaker Pro 7 DB's? Can you point me to a good tutorial (I've searched quite a bit and haven't found anything)? Lastly, if push comes to shove, I think I might just end up using Access and ASP/ASP.NET (both b/c of my lack of experience w/ FileMaker Server & Pro and b/c FileMaker Server and its Web publishing engine consume quite a bit of memory). Does anyone know what the record limit is for Access (i.e. at what point does Access start suffering in terms of performance)?

 

[Drakkon]

Filemaker is REALLY easy to learn an adapt forms to (I used 6 but 7 shouldnt be too much of a stretch). I learned it in about a day and was able to do EXACTLY what your talking about (converting 10-12 PDF forms to HTML) in about 2 days for a small university department. Really its jsut a matter of setting up the DB fields in filemaker and then setting up the form in their visual editor...at least the one i used had one...it saved off all the forms in their proper place, and the site was up and running jsut that quick. Tutorials from within the program are all i worked with.

 

[amdnVuser]

I've used 6 as well, and 7 is quite a bit different. I figured out the DB software (i.e. FileMaker Pro 7) rather quickly. Their Web publishing engine and XSLT, on the other hand, is a different story. First of all, you can just use FileMaker Pro's built-in Web publishing engine. However, you're limited in that the annoying built-in record navigation controls that appear in the form view will not disappear (i.e. you can disable them by default, but an end user can still enable them and navigate the entire database with the controls on a Web page). Your only choice, as far as I can tell, is to use the FileMaker Site Assistant to generate real Web front ends (w/o FileMaker's Pro's built-in controls) and the Custom Web publishing engine, which is where FileMaker Server 7 Advanced comes into play. However, FileMaker provides no XSLT editor (and the ones I've tried have turned out to be crap, especially for the amount of $ that's charged). So, short of having to take even more time to edit HTML formatting by hand, does anyone know of a good FileMaker Server Advanced/Pro 7 tutorial?

 

[Drakkon]

wow i hate it when companies change there software that much...why ruin something that works perfectly well like that :Q
I assume you probobly got all this: http://www.filemaker.com/support/product/documentation.html
other than that it only looks liek there is 1 book out there on it right now :-O

 

[HeroOfPellinor]

We still have some FM Pro 3 databases.....

 

[amdnVuser]

Yes, I have that documentation. A sales rep told that what was formerly all included in FM 6 has been split into FM Pro 7, Server 7, and Server 7 Advanced. I guess they're trying to both diversify and make some more $ considering how much they charge for Server 7 Advanced.