FMWebschool

This is an article from our newsletter, that I think will be interesting to many of you that work with FileMaker web publishing. I wont give away the surprise, but in our next issue, we will tell you how to speed up your pages and optimize your database. Enjoy! Join our newsletter

Overview

When web publishing with PHP and the FileMaker database, there are two predominant options on the market at this time: FX.php and the FileMaker PHP API. FX.php is an older third party library, that is compatible with FileMaker Server versions 6 and up, and is open source.

The FileMaker API is a proprietary library developed by FileMaker Inc and is compatible with FileMaker Server 9 and above. Both these libraries offer a fully functional interface to a FileMaker database and can be used very quickly in a PHP application, there are many reasons to use each one, and this document will focus on the performance aspect of each library.

Objective

Within the FileMaker community there is an ongoing debate on which library should be used, which one is faster, and what is going to be the long term winner in this “battle”.

This document attempts to place an unbiased perspective on the performance of each library in benchmark tests, and will aim to provide a reason for the differences that are found. In this first set of tests only the results are going to be presented, and a future document will follow with technical analysis as well as recommendations for performance enhancements.

Current Situation and Common Myths

Currently the accepted opinion within the community is that FX.php is the faster library. The advantages of the FileMaker API are generally cited as better code, and official endorsement by FileMaker Inc, as well as it being a developing technology with a lot of potential and a large budget behind it.

The degree to which FX.php is faster then the FileMaker API has been a hot topic, with approximations as low as a few percent to claims of FX.php being 7x faster – this benchmark attempts to put a more concrete number on this specific point.

Download the Documentation Here

Download our sample files

Join the forum discussing this benchmark test and ways to improve speed and optimization.

In Kindness
Stephen Knight
Ask me about FileMaker Hosting for Mobile Devices
http://www.fmgateway.com
800.353.7950

FileMaker Server 9v3 updater is now available for download at:
http://www.filemaker.com/support/downloads/index.html

If you are running Tiger and upgrade to FileMaker Server 9.0v3 and then upgrade to Leopard, you will need to uninstall and reinstall FileMaker Server 9.0v3. If you are planning on upgrading to Leopard, you should do the OS first and then get FileMaker Server up and running on Leopard — not the other way around.

The updater brings FileMaker Server 9v2 and FileMaker Server 9v2 Advanced to v3, and provides some important fixes for Windows and Mac, including Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard compatibility.

Please visit http://www.filemaker.com/support/downloads/index.html for additional details on this update, as well as installation instructions for Windows, Mac OS X 10.4 and Mac OS X 10.5.

NOTE:
- The FileMaker Server 9v3 updater only works on installs of FIleMaker Server 9v2 and FileMaker Server 9v2 Advanced. It will not update FileMaker Server 9v1 and FileMaker Server 9v1 Advanced. In these cases, you must update FileMaker Server 9v1 and FileMaker Server 9v1 Advanced to FileMaker Server 9v2 and FileMaker Server 9v2 Advanced first before applying the FileMaker Server 9v3 updater.

- If you apply the FileMaker Server 9v3 updater and then upgrade to Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5), you will need to completely un install and re-install FileMaker Server 9v3 for it to function properly.

Direct Links for the Mac

Tiger Page Direct Link: http://www.filemaker.com/support/updaters/fms_9.0v3_mac_updater.html

Leopard Page Direct Link: http://www.filemaker.com/support/updaters/fms_9.0v3_full_ESD.html

Please note that if you are running Tiger and upgrade to 9.0v3 then subsequently upgrade to Leopard you will need to uninstall server and then install the updates for Leopard.

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I’m going to throw my iPod in my Blendtec blender.

None of us can deny the iPod is a beautiful piece of technology. In fact some of us may even have emotional attachments to the iPod. It contains our favorite music, and that music makes us feel a certain way.

So when Tom Dickson founder of Blendtec painfully put his own iPod into his blender and filmed it, the impact was pretty amazing. Not just because of his connection to his iPod, but because Tom Dickson will blend just about anything to prove that his blender is the top of the line of blenders. Tom actually puts on an amazing online show called “will it blend”. So far, Tom has blended golf balls, marbles, cubic zirconia, credit cards, Barbie dolls, a video camera … and well, you get the picture. Read the rest of this entry »

Could it be true in the world of cell phone, TV advertisements, blogs, forums, RSS feeds and pod casts that 90% of Internet users and 56% of all Americans still rely on email as their main way of communicating with other individuals. Americans send over 2.4 trillion emails a year. Still, if you use emailing as a marketing tool, you are fighting a battle that may do more harm to your business than good if you are not diligent in following the new rules of email marketing.

In this article, I discuss the ways email marketing has changed, as well as how important it is to engage your customer. You will learn how to actually help your customers benefit from your emails and avoid hammering them over the head to use your products or services. Read the rest of this entry »

Last Month we discussed the power of community and some of the ways that businesses can increase their profits and lower cost at the same time. One of the main topics was the power of online forums. We took our own advice, and we have modified our forums to allow members to assign areas of expertise under their avatar. We have also implemented a value system where individuals posting questions can assign different point values to the questions. When an expert answers questions, the individual can choose what he thinks is the best answer and award the points (or kudos on our site) to the expert with the best answer. Read the rest of this entry »

Gone are the days of simple marketing where you could depend on a radio spot or a television commercial to sell your product or service. Our filtering system has become amazingly adept at maneuvering through the massive amount of information overload advertisers thrust upon us daily. We have become desensitized through repetition and have changed the ways that we make our purchases. Read the rest of this entry »

Enjoy this article by Michael Petrov on how to use Apache Server on Windows!

Up until now, only IIS was the supported server to run the FileMaker Server Advanced Web Publishing
Engine. However, Apache is a very popular web server for both Windows and Mac platforms and
includes a lot of very interesting modules such as mod_rewrite - which are great to use with many
sites to make search engine friendly URLs. Previously using Apache and FileMaker on Windows required
running IIS for the web publishing engine and Apache as a separate process - with the help of this
tutorial, you can eliminate IIS from your system and use only Apache!

Read the Complete Article Here

Enjoy!

* We realize this is not supported by FileMaker and could cause unsafe operation of your server - so apply these changes at your own risk. We’ve written this informative article because there are many individuals that prefer Apache over IIS *

FileMaker has released FileMaker Pro 9.0v2 and FileMaker Pro 9.0v2 Advanced, available now via a downloadable update.

The 9.0v2 update provides compatibility with Mac OS X Leopard as described below, and other features, and is recommended for all users.

Here is a list of other fixes in the 9.0v2 update that developers will be most interested in:

Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard):
The application no longer crashes when creating files if the system language and region do not match.

General Fixes:
Mac OS X: Get(SystemVersion) now returns the correct version on Mac OS X operating systems ending with double digit revision numbers, i.e.
10.4.10.

The database consistency check initiated on launch will no longer incorrectly report that a database is damaged for some databases that can be opened and used without any problems.

Printing Fixes:
The update addresses issues which cause the application to crash when a page range is specified.

Relationships:
A relationship with a global field now returns all related records if the value of the other key is empty.

For a complete list of fixes please refer to the updater Read Me: PDF of Fixes
http://www.filemaker.com/downloads/pdf/readme_fmp9v2.pdf

FileMaker Pro 9.0v2 and FileMaker Pro 9.0v2 Advanced Leopard update
downloads: Download the Update
http://www.filemaker.com/support/downloads/index.html

Please note that this update does not fix issues with the FileMaker
Pro 9 Instant Web Publishing (IWP) feature running on Leopard. We
intend to make IWP compatible with Leopard in an update expected in
December 2007.

We expect to deliver a Leopard compatibility update for our Server
products in early 2008. FileMaker Server 9 and FileMaker Server 9
Advanced currently do not deploy properly on Leopard. In the meantime,
FileMaker Pro 9 and FileMaker Pro 9 Advanced clients running on
Leopard do work with FileMaker Server and Server Advanced running on
Tiger or earlier versions of Mac OS X.

For info on earlier versions of FileMaker software and Mac OS X
Leopard:
http://filemaker.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/filemaker.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=6702

http://filemaker.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/filemaker.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=6703

http://filemaker.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/filemaker.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=6649

6702—Updater ReadMe
6703—Article re: older versions of FileMaker running on Leopard
6649—New info on FileMaker products and Leopard

FileMaker currently does not support Mac OS X Leopard. FileMaker’s official release below.

**
We are very excited about the release of Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5). We are currently working on Leopard compatibility updates for FileMaker Pro 9, FileMaker Pro 9 Advanced, FileMaker Server 9 and FileMaker Server 9 Advanced. At this time FileMaker does not recommend the use of FileMaker 9 products on computers running the Mac OS X Leopard.

We also do not recommend the use of earlier versions of FileMaker software on the Mac OS X Leopard because we have not performed compatibility testing on them.

**

While looking through the API code a few weeks ago, our team realized that the FileMaker API for PHP had a time bomb added into the code. We then immediately checked the code that was released with FileMaker Server 9, and found the same code.

This means that anyone that has downloaded the FileMaker API for PHP (Beta) and used it to develop websites - will have a non-functioning site as of Sunday October 7th, at 2 a.m.

FileMaker’s comments so far have been - We said that it was time restricted software, and you can fix the solution by upgrading to FileMaker Server 9.

Many people are arguing that their code works perfectly with FileMaker Server Advanced 8.04 why purposely time bomb the code so it no longer works? Was their some dramatic change to the API for PHP?

No…hardly anything has changed. As a matter of fact Eric Jacobson the Product Manager of Internet Technologies at FileMaker said that your code should work perfectly on Server 9 without any changes. Wait a minute…if it is the same code, then why the time bomb? Here is his quote -

“A website developed for use with the public beta should require very few, if any, modifications to use with the shipping version of the API.”

What has changed in the code is the fact that it runs a version check to make sure that it is using FileMaker Server 9. Yes, the code would absolutely continue working perfectly on FileMaker 8.04…. except for the little problem…the Time Bomb.

Is there an easy coding fix? You bet, 10 little digits would do the trick, but we are bound legally by FileMaker to -well here is what Eric Jacobson also posted -

I have attached a copy of the EULA for the Public Beta. I want to specifically point out section 1b:

YOU MAY NOT REVERSE ENGINEER, DECOMPILE OR
DISASSEMBLE THE SOFTWARE, EXCEPT AND ONLY TO THE EXTENT
EXPRESSLY PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. YOU MAY NOT MODIFY,
ADAPT, TRANSLATE, RENT, LEASE, LOAN OR CREATE DERIVATIVE WORKS
BASED UPON THE SOFTWARE OR ANY PART THEREOF.

It would have been nice if FileMaker had warned everyone saying - this software will NO longer work on October 7th develop at your own risk… but unfortunately, many individuals certainly thought that their PHP would continue working, and with the new release, they would just have to make a few coding adjustments.

I have written a long letter to FileMaker asking for permission to please let everyone know how to fix their code so their sites will continue working. I am hoping that FileMaker does the right thing.