[FX.php List] XML Bug Fixed in Recent Versions of FMS 13 (and other items)

[Chris Hansen]

Hey folks,

A couple of months ago, I was informed that the long-standing XML bug that has required the use of 'FMAlt' has been fixed. I've confirmed this in my own tests as well (hence the delay.)  The same individual, Claus Lavendt, also sent the following this morning:


With FMS 13v.1 FMI engineers made changes in the xml to make it compliant with the standard. Unfortunately this resulted in failing any calls, where the resultset included ascii charaters below 32, which is used as control characters. They are invisible and therefore hard to detect. Many FileMaker users copy text from emails, word documents, web browsers and other apps and paste it into FileMaker fields. It can often happen that such copy blocks include invisible characters, that is ascii below 32.
When you make a request via the xml (or actually the WPE component), where any field in any record include such a character, the request will fail and sometimes also result in long response times.
Due to several circumstances, this issue was not fixed until FMS13.0v5
If you are using the WPE component for XML calls or CWP, you need to make sure that your server is at least FMS13.0v5


It's possible that this behavior is the reason for some of the problems that people have encountered recently (I think Bob had a recent problems along this line.)

Finally, any of you that may be involved in testing of future versions of FileMaker server: please test for the XML bug as you evaluate, and report any problems VIA APPROPRIATE CHANNELS (I don't want to encourage folks to violate confidentiality.)  This bug reappeared in FMS 12 after being spotted and fixed just before the release of FMS 11; hopefully we can prevent that from happening again.

Best,

--Chris