Posts Tagged ‘database’

Filemaker Upgrade 11 -> 12 (Server and Clients)

Monday, February 4th, 2013

Update: The upgrade to FM12 is completed.

Usually Filemaker upgrades are pretty seamless as newer clients can deal with older server versions. This time however the Filemaker company decided to implement major changes into their FM12 upgrade that require a new database format. This means that FM12 server can't talk to FM11 clients and vice versa. Hence we have to upgrade both server and client in one go.
This migration will take place on

Monday, February 11, starting at 17:00.

This upgrade will affect you if you either:
a) use remote databases from fm.phys.ethz.ch,
b) use one of our managed workstations on which the client will be upgraded, or
c) both.

Actually, case c) will be the easiest as after the migration things should just work again on FM12. In case of a) you'll have to make sure that you upgrade your local FM11 client before you can continue using our remote databases (see this howto). For b): if you're on a managed workstation, you'll find the new FM12 client on Tuesday morning. If you're working with local databases (not from fm.phys.ethz.ch), you'll have to upgrade those databases to the FM12 format. FM12 will do this for you automatically when you open FM11 databases for the first time.
The server migration itself will probably take one hour during which time the remote databases on fm.phys.ethz.ch will NOT be available. The clients will be installed during the night Monday -> Tuesday. If you need access on your managed workstation on Monday evening after ~18:00, please let us know so that we can upgrade the client on your machine earlier.