On Jul 15, 2007, at 6:46 PM, John Weinshel wrote:
Moving to multiple files in 8.5 or 9 is a perfectly respectable and
common
method of migration.
John's advice is very good. There are no one answer to the 1 file,
many files question.
But first, I wanted to quote some good news for you, from FileMaker's
"techbrief_fm7_migration.pdf" document, page 8:
"Furthermore, the conversion process does not propagate corruption
that may have existed in a prior version."
Now, I don't know if you can trust that 100%, but it should give you
a better start (unless the conversion fails, and then you'll know the
worst).
You should read some of those migration documents, though it's quite
a lot to read. An important one is "migration_foundations.pdf," in
particular the chapters on Security, by Steven H. Blackwell, and the
one on Record Ownership, by Ilysa Kazar. The latter will help you
immediately, as some of the rules have changed.
Back to the multiple files question. First, you've got to have
FileMaker Advanced to do serious development, especially if you
consider consolidating files. You can convert the files as is, after
using MetaDataMagic if you can afford it. It can save you a lot of
time, especially if your File References have lots of duplicates and
obsoletes. To see if they do, first do a straight conversion as a
test, then look at the File References. In most solutions you'll be
appalled at the mess, and willing to do whatever to fix it. Which
means either fixing them one at a time in every relationship and
script, or letting MetaDataMagic consolidate them in the FileMaker 6
files before conversion.
Then consider whether to pull the purely line items files into their
parent files. This is not usually too difficult, at least for really
simple line items, like notes, etc.. That will begin to give you a
feel for it. This is sometimes referred to as the "modules" approach,
a few files, of only the main entities or areas of operation, with
their smaller files merged in as tables. It can be done gradually, as
John mentioned.
The Relationship Graph takes some getting used to. In many ways it
almost erases the functional distinction between files and tables.
It's hard to describe in a few words, but there is a lot of
flexibility, and a lot of power.
Fenton Jones
FileMaker Development
1728 Meade Ave
San Diego, CA 92116
619-692-1529
http://fentonjones.com
