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FileMaker Server 10 Tutorials

Installing FileMaker Server / Hosting Files pt. 2

Subtitles of the Movie

The upload feature in the FileMaker Admin Console has been around since FileMaker Server 9. Before that, the traditional way to move files to the FileMaker Server was by copying over or physically walking to the machine and installing the files there. And you can still do that and just like it does with the upload feature, when you move a file to FileMaker Server and you forget to toggle on the FM App Bit, FileMaker Server will enable it for you. So let's have a look. On our workstation we have the file like it was. It still has the two privilege sets for the users and it doesn't have the FM App Bit set in any of the privilege sets. What I've done is I've enabled file sharing on this workstation on my Public Folder. So what we need to do now is make a connection to our FileMaker Server and pull the files from this workstation to the FileMaker Server. A note on file sharing. The last thing you want to do is to share the FileMaker Server Files Folder. While that may seem to be like the logical way to move files to the FileMaker Server, it can be very dangerous. If someone or some automated process tries to move or copy the files while FileMaker Server has them open, that would cause serious problems for both the structure of the file and the data that's in it. Even if you set the user rights on the share very restrictive, it would still be a weak spot and we have to make sure and check often that no one modifies those rights. A better solution is to use the remote Desktop feature that are built into both OS X and Windows. Once you are connected to the FileMaker Server through a Remote Desktop, then you can pull the files from any network share, a network share that's away from FileMaker Server. On Windows you can enable the Remote Desktop feature right here on the computer, right click to get to Properties and on Properties go to the Remote Tab and enable Remote Desktop. Now, the client you need to connect is pre-installed on all Windows and you'll find it under All Programs, Accessories, Communications and it's right here; Remote Desktop Connection. There's a download available from Microsoft to have the same Remote Desktop Connection client for the Mac. On OS X you can enable Remote Desktop here from the System Preferences under Sharing and all you need to do is enable Remote Management. With Remote Management enabled, any OS X client with Remote Desktop Client Software will be able to connect to your FileMaker Server and take over its screen. In a cross-platform environment, you would have to enable this. And enable VNC viewers to control the screen with a particular password that you would set. Windows users will have to go out and download a VNC client to be able to connect to an OS X Remote Desktop. There's a couple of good ones out there that a simple Google search will turn up. The most popular one probably for Windows is TightVNC. Now, with Remote Desktop properly set up, we can go back to our Windows Server and then pull the file down to the FileMaker Server from the share that we have on our workstation. Like I've mentioned before, I've shared this Public Folder on my OS X machine so all we need to do is move the file into that share, go to our Windows Server, locate the share in our network neighborhood and then copy the file down to FileMaker Server's Databases Folder. This is where FileMaker Server expects the file to be, this default databases location or any other location that you've set up in the Admin Console, which we will cover later. Now, if you go back to our Admin Console, in this case running it on the OS X workstation, we'll see that the file has already shown up. But unlike a file that we moved using the Upload feature, it's still listed as closed so we'll have to manually open it before anyone can connect to it. There we go. This file is now hosted and remember, we didn't set any privilege bit set for the FM App for any users for any privilege set but FileMaker Server took care of that while we tried to open this file. So using the full-access account we can now log back into that file and set the FM App Bit for any privilege set that we want it to have.

Tutorial Information

Course: FileMaker Server 10
Author: Wim Decorte
SKU: 33950
ISBN: 1-935320-16-5
Release Date: 2009-01-05
Duration: 6.5 hrs / 97 lessons
Work Files: Yes
Captions: Available on CD and Online University
Compatibility: Vista/XP/2000, OS X, Linux
QuickTime 7, Flash 8

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