I'm putting a cross-platform (Mac and Windows) student information
system (that was used last school year as a standalone system) onto
FileMaker Server and am having a problem. I need to store some
information (custom value lists, merge fields, etc) in a local file on
each client computer, which is also used to open the hosted database
with a startup script. I've setup a local file and I can get it to
work fine on a Mac or a Windows computer, but not both.

The problem seems to be stemming from the relationship to the local
file from the hosted files. Say the local file resides under My
Documents in Windows, so I point the hosted files to the correct
location, but the same local file on a Mac can't be found by the
hosted files because it isn't in the same place.

The only solution I've been able to come up with is to have two sets
of hosted files, one for Mac and one for Windows, but I just shudder
to think of sharing data between the two, and that's really not an
option I want to try.

So, is there any way to setup something like a conditional
relationship to the local file? Like if it's run on a Mac, look for
the local file in this location, if it's on a Windows computer look in
that location. I had hoped since the local file is opened first, the
hosted files would notice that it was already open and not worry about
the location, but that didn't work.

The clients will be using FileMaker 6.0 under MacOS 8, 9, X, and
Windows 98 and 2000. The server is (obviously) 5.5 and running under
Windows 2000 Server.

Are you saying that you have a database hosted on a server that has a
relationship to a local databases? And that this relationship points to a
different local database (all with the same name) for each user on your
network? This sounds really bad to me for many reasons. Least of which is
maintenance on your end...each local database needs to be updated
individually when you make changes. Worst of which may be FileMaker's
tendency to become "confused" when there are multiple databases with the
same name on any computer in the same zip code (exaggerating only slightly).

What are you storing locally?

Why does the hosted database need to be related to the local one?
(the other way around would be acceptable, except for the duplicate name
thing)

"Shawt Reteo" <shawt_reteo (AT) hotmail (DOT) com> wrote