FileMaker
Pro may become unstable for a number of reasons and require
maintenance or recovery steps to restore the files to
working order. Unexpected shutdowns of a FileMaker Server
while hosting files is bad and usually leads to immediate,
obvious problems or worse, looming, invisible issues that
will impact your systems at the least opportune time.
Although high transaction volumes in FileMaker files don’t
inherently lead to problems but when file problems occur
the likely hood of disaster is greater. Interruption of
data while it is being written to a FileMaker database
frequently causes corruption in the data, scripts, tables
or even layouts.
How to Tell When FileMaker Has Crashed
FileMaker Pro crashes present themselves in a few different
ways. A dialog box saying “File Invoices.FP7 was forceably
closed by host”, for example, or, “Connection to Host was
interrupted” A coffee cup might appear on your screen after
attempting to type in a field or switching to another
FileMaker layout. Attempting to click in the active
FileMaker window eventually displays the windows “Not
Responding” message along with windows Task Manager also
indicating that the application is hung. In FileMaker
server you may find something in the Event Viewer
indicating that a file was closed. And in the FileMaker
Server Admin, under hosted files, you may notice a file
marked as “closed”.
FileMaker has built in functions to perform routine
preventative file maintenance using the “compact” and
“optimize” steps. These functions should be employed on a
regular basis to prevent file problems, improve file
performance and reduce file size.
The “Recovery” function is used to repair damaged files.
This is usually sufficient to restore damaged files to
working order. Following recovery, file maintenance should
be performed.
Occasionally, in the worst cases, there are two other
alternatives to resurrect files, cloning, and complete file
reconstruction.
