Installation: 25

The plugin is installed in the Extensions directory much like it is for the client application, except the path is different.

/Library/FileMaker Server/Database Server/Extensions.

On a Mac server you'll have to make sure that permissions are set correctly. I would invite some of you Unix geeks out there to comment on this here or to provide further clarification.

Owner: fmserver read/write

Group: fmsadmin read/write

Everyone: read only

Note: Once the Web Services plug-in is installed and permissions are set correctly, you'll then need to restart the Database Server. I have found it easier to just restart the computer instead.

Launch the server admin application (Admin Console) and under the configurations section, select Database Server, and then select the Server Plug-Ins tab. In this area you should now see the FM.Nexus Web Services plug-in. All you should need to do at this point is enable it and save the changes.

To take advantage of using the plugin with FileMaker server, you might want to write your scripts in such a way that the WSDL functions are loaded when the script is called upon. We'll put together a specific example of this and post it to the examples section soon. If you have purchased a server license, then you can write a script that runs continuously; trolling for any new WSDL functions that need to be processed. The benefit is that one license can accommodate your entire team, the drawback is that it isn't as speedy and direct as it would be if the user were interacting with the service directly, but then again, if all you need to do is to send out a phone notification about an upcoming appointment, then even if it goes out a minute or two later, it won't make much of a difference.

We'll talk more about robots and scheduled scripts in one of our upcoming examples.