I'm 5 years into a complex practice management system which includes an
extensive document management component. If you have only a few
documents/images, then embed them; otherwise my recommendation would be
to use the web view to preview documents and do any file manipulation
(open, print, etc.) with the filename stored in a field. It works
surprisingly well on the Windows platform.
Referencing the file may lock you into a file location so I wouldn't use
that approach either.
If you use the embedded approach then your backups become a major issue
because of the size of the data file. Even opening the FM file will
probably change the edit date or the file size, which will trigger a
backup of the entire dataset. If the files are located externally then
whether or not your backup software will need to back them up (assuming
an incremental backup) will depend on each file - the result is a much
shorter backup window for incremental backups.
Don Wieland wrote:
I am about to start development on a document management system in FMP 8.5.
I need to make a decision on whether to embed images, documents, etc... in
FMP 8.5 of just use a reference path.
Anyone have any comments about this or even better some commentary of the
two different choices with results of testing and/or implementation.
Thanks!
Don Wieland
DW DATA CONCEPTS
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