I've been given a request to upgrade an application running under filemaker pro 6.5. It's connected to some serial devices and uses plugin-component (troi) to solve the communication (rs232).
It's running in a closed network attached to a remote FM65-database.
Will FMP12 be able to run the application w/o a lot of recoding or has things changed too much?
Regards, /t
Simple answer, yes.
First of, there was no FileMaker 6.5. It went from version 5 to 5.5. to 6 and then 7. When version 7 was released there was a major update in fileformat for the databases, introducing multiple tables in a singel file and a new relationship schema.
Between version 11 and 12 there was another big update in fileformat. The bigest change being that the layouts are now rendered as HTML/CSS using WebKit.
Even though a lot has happend since version 6 FileMaker Inc always try to be backward compatible. As far as I know, no functionality has been removed, at least nothing vital.
Troi Serial Plugin works with FileMaker 12 but you will need to upgrade the plugin. you can read more about the changes for the plugin, pricing and download a demo at http://www.troi.com/software/serialplugin.html
You can also download a 30 day trail of FileMaker from http://www.filemaker.com
Thus you can easily try the entire setup for free before doing it for production.
The only thing you probably will have to adjust is the function call for the plugin Troi Serial, but that should be easy!
Hope this helps