judge@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca (Peter Judge) (11/23/90)
Hi, I am a Mac literate person who knows only a little about networking or databases. I need to network three to five macs running a 4th Dimension application. Three machines are located in separate regions so I would have to connect them via telephone lines; the others would be connected by cable. My questions are these: 1) How does 4th Dimension make use of modems to share a distributed database? Does it contain routines to implement networking over phone lines, or do I need a bridge? (Technical information regarding the purchase, installation and use of bridges would be welcome). 2) Is there recommended networking software to use with 4th Dimension (Appletalk, TOPS...)? 3) If it turns out to be too complicated (and expensive) to network the machines via phone lines, would it be relatively straightforward to merge the regional databases (only new records since last merge) once a week into a master file via floppy disk? This would involve identifying which records had been entered since the last merge on each of the regional machines and exporting them to an ascii file. Running the floppy over to the central machine and importing the file into the master database. Would the databases on the distributed machines have to have *exactly* the same structure for this to work? 4) Do I need a separate copy of 4th Dimension for each machine, or can I use runtime modules? 5) What is the minimum RAM requirement to run the 4th Dimension development system? 6) If I can use runtime modules, what is the minimum RAM required? Thank you in advance for your help. Please respond via e-mail since I don't read this newsgroup very often. ========================== Peter Judge judge@credit.erin.utoronto.ca -- =============================================== judge@credit.erin.utoronto.ca (Peter Judge) |) judge@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca ===============================================