I have a service operation job that is 400 (I think concurrent 60) users and about 200.000 record. I am thinking develop this job on Filemaker platform but I am not sure performance issue. Is there anyone with some idea or experience?
I have a service operation job that is 400 (I think concurrent 60) users and about 200.000 record. I am thinking develop this job on Filemaker platform but I am not sure performance issue. Is there anyone with some idea or experience?
It's not easy to answer your question without more info.
Okay, it's easy to say a quick "yes" to your question. Assuming everything is working great....
But these statements are not as informative as they might sound, because numbers of users or numbers of records aren't really terribly important criteria.
But the important thing to grasp is that how well a FileMaker system performs depends more on how it is designed, built and deployed than on how many users or how many records there are.
The advantage of FileMaker is that your system might — I am in fact willing to say can probably -- be started and put into operation with a much lower initial cost than you'd be paying with some other systems that are technically "more powerful". But I'd urge you to find an experienced, certified FileMaker developer to talk to.
Good luck.
Will
"Enterprise" is an abstract concept and can cover a couple of things in my experience:
1) the nature of the solution: high-availability, high-traffic, high-user counts. 60 concurrent users and 200,000 records does not qualify as enterprise in this respect.
2) the nature of the customer: big corporation with a set technology stack (that FM is part of or not), strict project management rules and lots of emphasis on risk mitigation, business continuity, disaster recover.
Under #2, sometimes even a simple solution for a small group within the enterprise is not accepted either because FM is not part of their approved technology, or the overhead added the non-technical requirements makes it prohibitively expensive.
For #1: FM has a sweet spot and it will never be enterprise-grade in the sense that you'd have sub-second response to a million concurrent queries. You wouldn't build Amazon's website on FM for instance.
wimdecorte wrote:
"Enterprise" is an abstract concept and can cover a couple of things in my experience:
....
Oh but "Enterprise" sounds like such a good word for marketing by hardware vendors! It also makes me think of a Star Ship! So put "Enterprise" on it and it is light years ahead of its time! I think I'll go put a piece of tape with "Enterprise" on my Mac Pro so I feel better! <cynical grin>
I am currently maintaining a solution for Neiman Marcus which has 77 million records and several hundred concurrent users at almost all times. Previously, I worked on a solution for Hasbro which also carried several hundred FileMaker users at all times, plus ODBC connections, web, etc.
There are many people that will keep warning you about scale, so I will not repeat; but I can speak to several large FileMaker developments which work well. I have at least a half a dozen 'large' examples of FileMaker running in the enterprise. In some cases, FileMaker 'plays well with others', and in other cases IT is just looking for a reason to EOL (End of Life) FileMaker, but so many of those stories are over interface, policy, and/or politics.
The FileMaker Platform is solid, and can be used with the 'acceptance' of IT. Like everything else at the 'enterprise' scale; it needs to be planned and document more robustly than for a quick, custom solution but in numerous cases- FileMaker is a rational choice.
Win cites (correctly) that FileMaker will never run the retail website for Amazon; however, Neiman Marcus has numerous websites (other stores they own) and every piece a product copy, every image, and the 'approval' status for each of those lives in FileMaker.
FileMaker 'feeds' the web systems via XML and shared storage; but the nature trying to present data from multiple enterprise sources and then provide quality interfaces for users is right up FileMaker's alley. The large systems used for online orders, inventory, and fulfillment do not offer 'features' to schedule photography, create (multiple JPEG), administrate an approval process, add 'fluff' copy, etc.
Trying to create new functionality in systems like SAP is very expensive and/or restrictive. FileMaker can gather data from numerous sources and can create 'Team Dashboards', which allows each group the functionality which they are most concerned. Since these needs are sometimes radically different,; these are like a set of small, custom solutions- an area where FileMaker excels.
The fact that they work under Active Directory and communicate with Oracle and other databases simply is a characteristic of a modern app in an enterprise. FileMaker's present web tools may not be the most appropriate for large-scale public deployments, but that doesn't mean that FileMaker does not have a role in these systems and/or organizations.
Obviously, Enterprise servers are a real thing. Walking into a client to deliver one of these is such an exciting thing...YEAH!
Fun aside, I will echo that 200k records is an easy thing in FileMaker. Having 60 concurrent users is also doable.
The performance of any FM solution is in how you design and deploy it. As wimdecorte and taylorsharpe mentioned, the entire deployment plan including recovery, network, emergency power, redundant storage, redundant hardware and other such things is just as important as the actual database design.
Here in Switzerland the IT often doesn't know, that FileMaker still is going strong. One question I often here «Oh, does FM still exists?» – Unfortunately the marketing of FM Inc for Europe (and Switzerland) is not of much help for us developers.
Thanks, bigtom! I want one of those Enterprise computers!!!!
Louis A. Voellmy wrote:
Here in Switzerland the IT often doesn't know, that FileMaker still is going strong. One question I often here «Oh, does FM still exists?» – Unfortunately the marketing of FM Inc for Europe (and Switzerland) is not of much help for us developers.
That happens a lot here in USA too. People who used it maybe back in the 1990's and haven't heard about it since then that are surprised when it is mentioned. And IT departments are often entrenched in the Microsoft world focusing on MS SQL Server or maybe they are in the Oracle camp. Both of which look down their nose at anything on FM. Obviously those big iron databases can handle larger simultaneous transactions, but there are many solutions I've seen done on them that were just a waste of money compared to what it would cost to sovle the same problem on FileMaker. And FM also plays well with those servers through ODBC/JDBC or RESTful API calls. I usually talk to those people about how FM can integrate well with their current solutions while providing rapid solutions at lower costs as an entry into their businesses if they are open to it. I also talk about how easy it is to do mobile solution for iPads and iPhones which are really hard otherwise.
You can design a FileMaker solution with only 10000 records and 1 user that is so slow it is not useable. Or you can build a clean schema solution with millions of records and supporting hundreds of users. The amount of relationships, unstored calculations, hardware, networking can make huge impacts to make solutions work or fail.
But, yes, a properly developed FileMaker solution should be able to handle 60 concurrent users and multiple tables with hundreds of thousands of records. There are a number of things to do optimize performance such as limiting unstored calculations and minimizing the number of fields in a given table and building relationships properly. The layout design can impact things a lot depending on how many user interface calculations you have such as conditional formatting and hiding, etc.
Do you have a FileMaker mentor or have you thought about getting some assistance from a FileMaker consultant? How much of the work do you want to do yourself and how much would you want to hire out? If you want to do the work yourself, you will need to study up on good FileMaker practices through things like the FileMaker Training Series or online training such as Lynda.com or VTC.com.
If you are looking for a consultant or expert to help, you can find many of them by geographic location at: Find FileMaker developers to create custom apps | FileMaker