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A quick note about container fields, and how they are set up in FMStarting Point.
Now first off, we have a number of container fields that are in use in FMStarting Point.
We have a couple in contacts; we have several in products, or we have the product image;
and we have a number of them in projects where we have contracts that can be stored, that
type of thing. So we like to use digital documents management, and FileMaker in general and that's
why we've used containers fairly liberally in FMStarting Point. Now it's important to
note that we've set FMStarting Point to ship with the containers set for internal storage,
and this is what i mean by that. If you go to file > manage > database and you down here
to the image data right here which is the photo in contacts. I click options, you can
see under storage here that we haven't set the image for external storage. This is also
known as remote containers. This was a huge improvement released with FileMaker 12, which
allows containers to be stored externally. This greatly improves the performance of a
FIleMaker database, and I highly recommend that databases that are going to be seriously
used by a customer especially customers that are going to be storing images, pdfs and contracts,
things like that in their containers change the set up of their database to store their
containers with external storage. You can use secure storage or open storage, either
one, but I highly recommend you set it up this way. Now for simplicity, if you have
a mission critical database, of course I recommend that you move your copy of FMStarting Point
to a FileMaker server, that's important, that gives you all sorts of robust support and
reliability and backup support; it also gives you encryption over the internet.
So FIleMaker Servers is an important asset to have, but then once you get your FMStarting
Point running on FileMaker Server, you can go ahead and come in here and make this change
right here, then select OK, and FileMaker even when the database is already on the server
will allow you to make this change right here and transfer the containers to remote storage.
This will greatly improve the performance of the database by removing the contents of
the containers from internal storage inside the FMP12 file outside the file itself. Now
keep in mind, you're going to have to actually manually reset each of the containers in each
of the table. So you have to change the storage in contacts; you have to change it in projects,
in products, and also in documents. So keep that in mind.
Now why don't we ship FMStarting Point with the containers already set for external storage?
Well if we did that, you download FMStarting Point; you come with the external storage
set up with the directory structure like this, then you get both of these files like this.
You get FMStarting Point right here, and you get a folder with all sorts of images in it
right here. And for brand new users of FileMaker, this might be enough to confuse them. So we
try to keep everything simple by having the containers set to internal storage simply
inside the FMP12 file right here. As FIleMaker users become more advanced and may watch this
video, they'll know:
A. They should be using FileMaker server B. They should seriously consider moving their
containers to remote or external storage.