I recently attended a three day intensive training called FileMaker 7 Migration Bootcamp held at the FileMaker Inc. HQ in Santa Clara, CA. I learned a lot and have described my detailed learnings for each day of the camp. We've concluded that a realistic date for our first FileMaker 7-compatible version (Studio Manager 5) is October 1st.
We were originally targeting August 15th, but scrapped our plans after attending the bootcamp. We are restarting the conversion process almost from scratch with a better plan and approach. Earlier efforts were not wasted, though, because we learned a lot along the way.
Goals for Studio Manager 5.0:
- Make Studio Manager compatible with FileMaker 7
- Test it thoroughly so that all existing functions work correctly.
- Change existing files as little as possible to avoid introducing new variables that were not controlled for in the original code.
For example, passwords are not case-sensitive in FileMaker 6 but they are in 7. You may be using abc as a password in one file and Abc in another and not be noticing the difference in 6. It saves time and aggravation to do a quick inventory of passwords prior to conversion so that you don't get caught short. We'll be including these kinds of tips and suggestions in our special upgrade manual.
Plans for Studio Manager for FileMaker 6. We are going to play this by ear. One thing we know for sure is that we will be supporting FileMaker Pro 6 for at least three years. That means you don't have to upgrade to 7 for at least 3 years if you don't want to. That means if you have a problem, we'll help you solve it.
We expect to do new releases of Studio Manager for FileMaker 6 but we aren't sure whether we will do new features or just do maintenance releases. Your input will sway us one way or the other. If we think there is demand for feature upgrades for the 6 version, we will do them.
Plans for Studio Manager 5.1 and beyond. We think it will be a one to two year process to fully replace FileMaker 6-created files with FileMaker 7 files. When that process is complete, there will likely be no more than 6 files in Studio Manager. There are now 28 files. In 7 you can combine data *files* (now called tables) into a single file. You gain some efficiencies with this that are attractive. We might have Studio Manager running in one file but we haven't finalized the ultimate architecture partly because we don't have to. We plan to migrate functionality 1 file at a time at a pace that makes sense.
Why don't we do a version from scratch in 7? It's not because we don't have the energy or will. It's because we think our knowledge of the best practices for FileMaker 7 will be increasing rapidly over the next year to 18 months and we don't want to build everything now based on guesswork as to how best to take advantage of 7's power.
We can gain many of the advantages of 7 by creating a single new file that references our converted existing files. If it seems desirable, we can centralize your interaction with Studio Manager in this one new file, even though the *back-end* data is still residing in FileMaker 6-designed files that have been converted but not significantly modified. Please leave a comment here or email me if you have questions or input for us about all this.