[FX.php List] What to tell a customer that wants to use FM IWP vs PHP/FX

Fri Oct 3 15:36:06 MDT 2008

While I do agree with Blair that IWP works well in some situations,  
there are others where it's clearly not up to the task.

For example, I worked on an IWP database that's used in a huge factory  
near Nashville, where 100-200 employees use an IWP database for their  
in-house training. The company is very pleased with how it works on  
their network; however, this isn't going out over the Internet.

We host quite a few IWP solutions here, and have some that have been  
hosted here ever since FileMaker 7 was released. I don't know how high  
their traffic is exactly, but the clients are apparently happy with  
their performance.

Having said that, here are a couple of things that I've encountered  
when working with clients' IWP solutions:

1. Secure transactions - there are ways around the limitations with  
IWP, but essentially it's a huge pain to try to do merchant  
transactions with an IWP solution over the Internet. For example, one  
client tried to do this, and his customers kept trying to use the  
browser's BACK button, which caused huge headaches for him. Eventually  
he contacted me and I rewrote his solution in PHP.

2. Alerts - I like to use Javascript FORM validation, and that's not  
available in IWP. You can write the validation in the layouts, but  
can't use popup alerts. I know, you can fake it with layouts that show  
alerts (I've used this on IWP solutions), but for me it's a huge pain.

3. Speed - Get any more than a dozen or so hitting an IWP site and  
things can quickly bog down.

4. Eating up user slots - FileMaker Server only allows for 125  
concurrent users. In a hosted environment such as Longterm Solutions,  
where our clients are hosted on shared servers with other databases,  
each IWP user is counted as a concurrent user. If that user walks away  
from his computer without logging out, he's still taking up one of the  
user slots. So if a server has 70 databases on it, and there are 20-25  
clients sitting on a server, as there often is here, and then an IWP  
site has another 50 or more connected, you have 75 concurrent users on  
the server at one time. On the other hand, with a PHP solution, users  
aren't concurrent users at all; the site engages in transactions with  
the server, but it's not constant.

So consider a site where there are a lot of users who might be  
"sitting" on the site for a length of time; adding 100 users could max  
out the server, making it unavailable to all of the other clients  
whose databases are hosted on the same machine.

5. Email, etc. - Trying to do things like email, PDFs, etc. with IWP,  
in my opinion, is much more difficult. In PHP it's a simple matter to  
deal with PDFs, send out multiple emails after a cart transaction or  
registration; before someone tells me that all of this is doable in  
IWP, I do know that--but it's easier, in my opinion, to get these done  
in PHP, without using scripts or plugins.

6. Scripts - So far, in the 4-5 years I've been doing PHP sites, I've  
never had to use a script. We've had discussions on here about the  
speed difference between scripting a function or writing it in PHP,  
but I still prefer to have everything happening in PHP, leaving the  
server to take care of other things, deal with other users, etc.

I have a fairly large IWP site that's going to be live very soon, and  
I'm interested to see how their use affects other databases on the  
same server. They've been testing for quite a while, but once more  
users are hitting the database I'll be watching to see how it affects  
bandwidth, etc.

Bottom line: I think IWP is fine for in-house, but I don't recommend  
it to any of my clients for Internet use. Others may of course  
disagree with me, but that's my professional opinion.

Best regards,

Bob Patin
Longterm Solutions
bob at longtermsolutions.com
615-333-6858
http://www.longtermsolutions.com
iChat: bobpatin
AIM: longterm1954
FileMaker 9 Certified Developer
Member of FileMaker Business Alliance and FileMaker TechNet
--------------------------
FileMaker hosting and consulting for all versions of FileMaker
PHP • Full email services • Free DNS hosting • Colocation • Consulting

On Oct 3, 2008, at 2:11 PM, Blair Duncan wrote:

> I've never understood the bad wrap that IWP gets. Usually this is  
> due to
> users expecting all of the feature that work fine in the FMPro  
> Client to
> work in IWP as well. When they don't, it can be painful to re- 
> engineer to
> accommodate IWP and most tend to give up on it.
>
> We have been using IWP for several years and generally like it a  
> lot. IWP
> provides a consistent interface that enables users to do a lot of data
> entry, perform finds and run reports, trigger automated emails etc.
>
> We use a combination of all three: IWP, FMPro Client and FX.php  
> driven by
> FMSA. From within IWP, anything that requires the client such as  
> building
> pdfs, emails etc, we have in the corner a FMPro client running as  
> slave to
> process the request from the web and return the data to the IWP  
> client. With
> the addition of FX.php we have additional arsenal under our belt  
> that has
> enabled us to eliminate most of the shortfalls of IWP.
>
>
> On 10/3/08 2:04 PM, "John Funk" <criticalsolution at comcast.net> wrote:
>
>> I have a Customer with a very large, 500+ layout, 50 Table,  
>> convoluted,
>> complex and mostly self made database. He "discovered" Instant Web
>> Publishing and now he wants to integrate some IWP pages into his  
>> solution.
>> (This is like a kid in a candy store) I have been trying to sell  
>> him on the
>> idea of using traditional html pages with PHP (FX) instead. I have  
>> many
>> reasons why I do not want to go with IWP, but mostly because this  
>> customer
>> is non technical and thinks he can just make his layouts and they  
>> will work
>> just like that.
>> There are already small parts of the solution that DO use PHP/FX.  
>> In the big
>> picture I am working on him to let me rewrite the entire FM solution.
>>
>> I am looking for bullet points that tell the reasons NOT to use IWP  
>> vs
>> html/php/fx. If there are good reasons to go with IWP, list them  
>> also.
>>
>> Any feedback is greatly appreciated.
>>
>> John Funk
>> Critical Solution
>>
>>
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