Developing for Multiple Users

Some of the best, most lovingly developed FileMaker Pro systems are only ever used by a single person. A certain author's mother is a prime example: Her entire insurance sales practice is driven by a FileMaker Pro database. It is a mature system, built so that "someone's mom" can use it, and lives without any expectation of being extended to include other users.

Then there are the rest of the databases out there. FileMaker Pro enjoys a graceful growth curve from single-user applications to systems that support enterprise-level workgroups and operations of hundreds of users.

This graceful transition from single-user to multiuser thankfully means that issues to take into consideration when building multiuser systems are reasonably modest. Much of what you already know about building FileMaker Pro systemsregardless of your planned deploymentalso applies directly to building a multiuser application.

We'll cover two primary topics: how the FileMaker engine handles multiple users, and development techniques you need to consider when building multiuser applications. As a third discussion, we also go into some depth about audit trails, given that they often are used to help ensure data integrity in systems used by larger organizations and are used specifically to track multiple-user scenarios.

We recommend that anyone intending to deploy a system to multiple users read this chapter. Some of the issues we discuss become necessary considerations only in systems that are getting heavy use from multiple users, but they're good to have in mind nonetheless.