Upgrading to Filemaker 7
Last Modified 3/21/05.

There are several issues you may encounter when upgrading to Filemaker 7. First of all, if your solutions are password protected, you now have not only a username, but a password. The default username will be the user of the application, which you can not change to nothing; however, when you convert your previous solutions that had only a password, you will have to erase the username every time to get into them so it's kind of a pain. Although if you set them up on your keychain, it makes it automatic. You can also just change the password to include a username, but if it's a multi-file system, that's a lot of work, and if it's shared, most likely you won't want to duplicate everything so that every user has their own unique to their username.

Converted solutions don't automatically convert to multiple tables in the same file. I heard there's a tool to do that but those who have tried it say you still need to pretty much rebuild the tables yourself. Perhaps it doesn't take field types into consideration or doesn't do calculation fields. I haven't looked at it myself, but I've heard the Windows version is better than Mac. Converted solutions also have lots of extra file references that you will need to erase (all but the relative one) to keep the system from being slow. You may run into some problems with scripts, particularly if they start a related record, then go to the detail screen and try to enter more data. The system will try to occupy the record from both the parent and child database and have a conflict. If your portal is sorted, it will also lose track of which record you were on when it goes to the detail view. Some calculations will no longer work. If you had a calculation that occasionally wound up trying to divide by 0 for some reason, it used to default to 0, and now it will be a question mark. It will mess up every other calculation that references it, too. Filemaker 7 is not really faster than 6.

As for web solutions, Filemaker 7 does work with Lasso 7 but you'll need to buy Filemaker Server Advanced, and it doesn't work with WebStar. You have to use the built in Personal Web Server if you're on Mac. If you're using CDML, you can kiss that code goodbye. The XML/XSLT replacement doesn't work nearly as well with CSS, so you can't really get things to look like you want them to look and every little <p> and <br> on your HTML page will have to have a case sensitive end tag even if normally you wouldn't need one.

Miscellaneous behavior issues include - if you start a movie in a container field from within a script, you can't get it to stop by using another script to halt the original script. The only thing you can do is a command period - a very inelegant solution. Also, if you issue a "go to field" request in a script, it can go to that field on a layout even when the field behavior has been marked as "do not enter". If you try it with a button, it won't work.

There are some bugs and inconsistencies, but it does have some nice features, too, like the ability to control password protection in multiple tables that are in the same file. The ability to reference globals in all tables regardless of relationships although I've noticed if the globals are calculations referencing other tables, they sometimes won't update properly. In Filemaker 7, you can make relationships on ranges and multiple criteria. There are also some added font capabilities provided as calculation functions.

If you're happy with what you have, now, I would not rush to convert your files to the latest version, but you probably will eventually have to because sooner or later the operating systems will no longer be compatible with the old versions. You know how it goes. Upgrade one thing and you wind up having to upgrade everything. When that time comes, though, Filemaker 7 is pretty similar to the previous version and converts fairly well, all things considered. I think you'll like it in the long run.

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