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I’ve done a couple of posts now on viewing FileMaker databases over the web via different methods – Instant Web publishing, using Site Assistant to build a PHP based site; using custom web publishing and FileMaker’s API to build a PHP based website from scratch. Each technology has their has their Pros and Cons, but which one is the best one to use? There’s no cut and dried answer to that question; it really depends on a number of things. If you are familiar with FileMaker but don’t have the interest (or time) to learn PHP, then instant web publishing will work pretty well – you don’t get exactly them same functionality in IWP that you would on the desktop, but it’s getting closer with each version of FileMaker. It’s also easier to make changes using IWP than it would be with PHP. Need to add a field, or move it? Just go into FileMaker and make the change and that’s pretty much it.
One place you will hit a problem with is the number of users. Right now, FileMaker server has a hard limit of 100 simultaneous users. If you’re building a system that’s only going to be used by yourself or your company (assuming that your company has less that 100 potential users) then that’s more than enough, but if you’ve got a website that’s going to be hit by a lot of people (even if it’s for a short period of time), then you could have some problems with IWP – once that 100th person logs on, that’s it; no one else can get in until somebody logs out. IF you hit this scenario, then it may be time to make a change.
So why would custom web publishing be different? It still has the same 100 connection limit doesn’t it? Well, yes, but the way it’s handled is different. With IWP, once a user logs on, they use one of those 100 connections until they log off (or they time out) – so they could in theory use up that slot all day. With CWP, the connection is only used as long as it takes PHP to get the data it needs from the database – usually less than a second. So you still only have 100 connections at a time, but since they are only being used for a fraction of a second, it increases the number of users you can have on your site.
So what’s the best approach to publishing FileMaker data on the web? There really isn’t one – any of the current solutions is viable. You might even use more than one of them in the life cycle of a database – you could start off in IWP for the ease of development, but once your site gets bigger, you might get a web developer in (or learn PHP your self) and switch over to custom web publishing. There’s no right or wrong approach – just what’s best for you and your database.
