Filemaker 8 Networking Woes

[Nirgal]

Hello. I'm a new FM8 user, I normally work with MySQL, PostgreSQL, and some Oracle but a client of mine needs to use FM8 on OSX so here I am.

 

I've got FM8 Pro all installed just fine but I'm really struggling with the networking - and specifically the web sharing and ODBC aspects. I've used the OSX ODBC Manager to install the driver located on the FM8 CD and set that up as both System and User. I then tried both setting up a User and System data source and supplied the 'Host', 'Port', and 'DataSource' (can't remember full key name) for both. However the php odbc api says it cannot find a driver or load a default driver.

 

So I ventured off into the web area and tried to use xml, but I can't seem to get that working either. Those are my problems, now my questions.

 

1) Is there a better tutorial online, in a book, or something one of you could give me some tips on how to install the ODBC drivers? Perhaps this is something simple I'm missing, I don't know.

 

2) What is the URL to the XML data for the web publishing aspect? I've tried using what I could find with FM9 and a method from a previous version of FM but nothing works there either. I even tried the "-format=-dso_xml" from what I assume has been depreciated.

 

Perhaps there's a good book that an explain all of this, but I'd need some recommendations.

 

Thank you!

[Nirgal]

Some updates to anyone that might be able to help me.

 

First, I've upgraded from 8.0v1 to 8.0v3 - the highest I can seem to upgrade to. I tried installing the 8.0v3 Advanced Web Publishing update, but it gave me an error saying it couldn't be installed on an Intel cpu based mac.

 

So here are my main two questions:

1) Do I have to be running the 8.0v4 Advanced Web Publishing update in order to have the XML output?

 

2) Is the reason that I can not get ODBC to work because the driver is a PPC binary and it's not really compatible with Rosetta - same with the 8.0v4 update.

 

Thanks.

[David Head]

Here is my question:

 

What are you trying to do? Sounds like you trying to do custom web publishing from FileMaker Pro using XML?

[Nirgal]

Here is my question:

 

What are you trying to do? Sounds like you trying to do custom web publishing from FileMaker Pro using XML?

 

Well my ultimate goal is to access Filemaker databases from PHP using FM8. My first method was to use ODBC, and when that didn't work I wanted to use exactly what you said. I'd suggest to upgrade to FM9 but the client doesn't want to, or at least for now, so I'm stuck with using FM8.

[David Head]

You are not able to do that with FileMaker Pro 8 - you will need FileMaker Server to do web hosting with PHP.

[Nirgal]

You are not able to do that with FileMaker Pro 8 - you will need FileMaker Server to do web hosting with PHP.

 

Aah ok, so only Filemaker Server has the xml web publishing?

 

What about the ODBC driver errors I get? Is that due to the fact that it's a ppc binary that has problems running on an intel mac via rosetta?

[David Head]

Yes you need FileMaker Server.

As for the ODBC drivers, well FileMaker Pro 8 predates the Intel machines so that may be the case. Did you read the manual and install guide on the CD? If there is no reference to Intel compatibility then you may be out of luck trying to mix a new machine with old software.