Instant Web Publishing Guide

Chapter 4
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Designing a database for Instant Web Publishing 29
1 If your solution includes multiple files, Instant Web Publishing must be enabled in all databases. If you
don’t want related files to be accessed directly, you can exclude a filename from the Database Homepage
by enabling the Don’t display in the Instant Web Publishing Database Homepage option in the Instant Web
Publishing dialog box.
1 If your solution includes multiple files, then identical accounts, passwords, and privilege sets must be
created in each file used by Instant Web Publishing. The account and password you provide when you
open the first file is used to authenticate related files.
1 If your layout contains a portal, related records also display in a web browser within a portal, provided
that the related file or table is also shared with Instant Web Publishing. When you submit a record
containing a portal you might be notified that another user has modified one of the records since you
loaded the page. If this occurs, refresh your page and submit the data again. If this is a likely scenario,
consider using portals as “read only” forms. Alternatively, you can edit related record data in portals by
using the Go To Related Record script step and editing them directly.
1 Web users can create and edit portal records. To delete a portal record, you must provide a scripted button
that selects the appropriate portal record, then deletes it.
General database design considerations
Keep the following points in mind:
1 If you are designing a database that will be accessed by both Instant Web Publishing and FileMaker Pro
network clients, it’s best to design with web clients in mind to ensure compatibility across both technologies.
1 Communication from a client to the FileMaker host goes through intermediary technologies with Instant
Web Publishing. When you request data with Instant Web Publishing, you are sending the request from
a web browser to a virtual FileMaker environment, which processes your request, then requests and
retrieves the results from FileMaker
Pro. These results are then passed back to the browser. This
interaction is usually undetectable to web users, but occasionally you must take action to make sure the
results are the same regardless of how clients access your database. Because web users don’t have a direct
connection to the host, they aren’t notified immediately when data changes. For example, you may need
to update your scripts to include the Commit Records/Requests script step to refresh the browser window.
For more information, see
“Script steps tips and considerations” on page 33 and “Creating a script to log
out of a database and close the session” on page 36.
1 Each database must be assigned a unique filename, when you host them with Instant Web Publishing. If
you have two hosted databases with the same name, only one appears in the Database Homepage in
Instant Web Publishing.
1 When defining account names and passwords, avoid characters that may be interpreted incorrectly on the
web. You may want to limit account names and passwords to alphabetic and numeric characters only.
1 It is best not to set too many field validations on a layout. When web users submit a record, an error is
returned each time a validation has not been met.
1 Typically, third party plug-ins can be used for web published databases if they do not attempt to display
information to an end-user’s screen, if they do not require direct end-user interaction, if they do not
interact with the FileMaker Pro user interface, or otherwise require interaction from end users.