An interesting dilemna.

I have designed a solution that allows a group of individuals to check
a central filemaker server over the internet in order to download
updated files.

It works fine, but causes a problem when they are not connected to the
network, in that the relationship i have created between the solution
and the IP address of the server comes up as not found and asks them to
find the file!!!

Is there a way to switch this process off, so that if filemaker cannot
see the file it doesnt try, or a way to make the relationship periodic
so that only when you want to make the remote link does it look for it?

Any help would be appreciated


David

In article <1131953995.078224.132390 (AT) f14g2000cwb (DOT) googlegroups.com>,
dp (AT) ewitness (DOT) co.uk says...
Provided you do not "utilize" the remote file, filemaker won't try to
open it.

By "utilize" I mean, there must be no visible fields or script steps
that reference or rely on it.

As soon as filemaker is forced to evaluate anything that refers to the
remote file it will try to open it, in order to complete the action.

Build your solution so that by default, none of the functions or layouts
rely on that relationship, write a script to handle opening the remote
file, and only allow them to access layouts / scripts that refer to the
remote file after it has been opened.

I haven't personally tried this with FM7/8, but have a couple FM3/4 and
5/6 deployments that work this way, and work well.

Good luck,
Dave

Thanks Dave,

It seems that just having created the relationship, even though no
field were on an activ elayout was enough to cause the problem.

However, I have found a clever fix!

Put a second duplicate database (of the remote one) with no records
file into the local solution directory. Added this to the file
relationships settings as the second choice:

so i got

fmnet://www.domain.co.uk/test
file:test

then created a global variable in both files call local.glbl with
different values, local and remote depending on the location.

Now if the user opens the solution without a web connection it defaults
to the second local copy without any delay. When i run my import script
it checks the global and returns a you must restart the application
with an internet connection if the result of the relationship lookup
test::local.glbl=local

if it =remote then it runs the script!!!

Filemaker is just so brilliant! Thanks for your help.

David
42 wrote: