Introduction
Actual Technologies products use license keys that are available in three editions:
- Personal Edition: 5 connections
- Professional Edition: 10 connections
- Server Edition: 250 connections
For most desktop applications (such as Excel), the 5 connections supplied with the Personal Edition are more than enough for a single Mac.
There are some special applications that require the 10 connection Professional Edition, but you will be directed to get the 10 connection license by your application's documentation if that is the case.
You will need one license key for each "seat" (computer) where the driver is installed. We can give you a single key for all your licensed Macs if you purchase 20 or more seats. We also have site license available, to cover an unlimited number of Macs. Contact us at orders@actualtech.com if you are interested in a single key or a site license.
FileMaker 9 External SQL Sources
The new External SQL Source feature of FileMaker 9 provides great simplicity for ODBC connectivity and deployment.
When you "share" a FileMaker database using FileMaker Pro 9, or host a FileMaker database using FileMaker Server, the ODBC driver only needs to be installed on the Mac hosting the database. The driver does not have to be installed on each client Mac or Windows PC.
When using External SQL Sources, the FileMaker application hosting the database makes all ODBC connections on behalf of the clients. Since the driver is only installed on the Mac hosting the FileMaker database, you only need a single "seat" license for the driver.
When you host a FileMaker database, you will need to make sure your license supports the number of connections that FileMaker Pro or Server will be making. In general, your license will need one connection for each FileMaker client that will be connecting to the hosted database.
When hosting a FileMaker database, FileMaker Pro 9 (and FileMaker Pro 9 Advanced) allow up to 10 client connections to use ESS at any given time. FileMaker Server 9 (and FileMaker Server 9 Advanced) allow up to 250 client connections through ESS. For this reason, we offer the Professional and Server editions for our drivers, which also allow 10 or 250 concurrent connections.
Although any edition of our license will work with any edition of FileMaker Pro, we recommend the following configurations:
- Personal Edition: for developers creating FileMaker solutions (one seat for each developer)
- Professional Edition: for workgroups hosting a database using FileMaker Pro
- Server Edition: for databases hosted using FileMaker Server
PHP and other server-based solutions
If you will be using our driver with PHP or any other Apache-based solution, we recommend the 10 connection Professional Edition for workgroup applications, and the 250 connection Server Edition for larger applications.
If you develop your application in such a way that it keeps connections open only while accessing the database, you can serve many more than 10 users with a 10 connection license. As a general rule, we recommend that you open the connection at the start of processing a web page, and close the connection when processing for the page is complete. This means that a connection is available to be used by another user while the current user is reading the page content and deciding what to do next.
For more information
To learn more about the FileMaker database connectivty, return to our FileMaker Resource Center. For more information about licensing, please contact us at orders@actualtech.com.
