Claris FileMaker Cloud 2.19.1.2 Release Notes

October 2020 (updated November 2020)

This document provides information about Claris® FileMaker Cloud® 2.19.1.2. For more information, see the Product Documentation Center or visit the support resources on our website.

FileMaker Cloud 2.19.0 Release Notes

Software details

Enhancements and compatibility

FileMaker Cloud 2.19.1.2 is compatible with Claris FileMaker® 18 and 19 Platform clients.
You can now use Microsoft Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) to authenticate FileMaker Cloud users.

Performance, stability, and reliability improvements

Stability and reliability without page-level locking: Under certain conditions, page-level locking (PLL) could cause stability and reliability issues. PLL and the startup restoration feature are linked, so the startup restoration setting controls PLL as well. To improve stability and reliability, PLL and startup restoration are now disabled, and you can no longer use Claris FileMaker Admin API to set or get the preference for startup restoration.
After performing exhaustive stress testing using several industry-standard and internally-developed tools, it was determined that using a sharing lock for low-level access to the database structure, along with parallel indexed finds, sorting on the host, and other optimizations, now achieves similar or better performance than using PLL.
Use of a sharing lock for low-level access to the database structure: To replace the use of PLL as described above, FileMaker Cloud 2.19.1.2 now uses a sharing lock to manage low-level access to the database structure. Before PLL was introduced, the database engine managed access using a mutex (mutually exclusive object), which allowed only one thread at a time to read or write the database structure. However, a sharing lock allows concurrent read access (as long as system resources allow) but still requires an exclusive lock for write access. Because most database structure accesses are read operations, the use of a sharing lock improves performance for concurrent users of the same database.
Parallel indexed find operations: Because a sharing lock is used to allow concurrent read access, version 2.19.1.2 can now perform find operations on indexed fields in parallel. Previously, only one indexed find operation could be performed at a time.
Sorting records on the host: In previous versions, FileMaker Cloud always transferred records to FileMaker clients (Claris FileMaker Pro^™ and Claris FileMaker Go®) to perform a sort. However, starting with version 19.1.2 of the FileMaker clients and version 2.19.1.2 of FileMaker Cloud, FileMaker Cloud can perform the sort if the host is not busy; otherwise, the client will perform the sort.
Memory-based key comparison during indexing: A text field containing multiple values (each value separated by a carriage return) that's used as a match field in a relationship is called a multikey field. The FileMaker database engine can resolve relationships that use a multikey field as the match field. In versions earlier than 2.19.1.2, the database engine parses multikey fields and stores the individual indexable keys in a temporary file. To improve how multikey text fields are indexed, version 2.19.1.2 now stores the keys in memory and performs key comparisons in memory, which is more efficient.
Memory-based key comparison during indexing is supported in FileMaker Cloud, Claris FileMaker Server^™, and FileMaker Pro but not in FileMaker Go.

FileMaker Cloud version information

The Get(HostApplicationVersion) function returns Cloud Server 2.19.1.xxx where xxx is the build number. For example, if the build number is 211, the returned value is Cloud Server 2.19.1.211.
FileMaker Cloud Admin Console shows the FileMaker Cloud version as 2.19.1.xxx where xxx is the build number.

Addressed issues

The following issues were addressed.

Users were not able to download a file if the filename had 13 characters, excluding the .fmp12 extension.
November 2020: Claris FileMaker Data API returned an error message for an API request that was sent more than an hour after signing in to Claris ID.
November 2020: Claris FileMaker WebDirect^™ didn’t support the FileMaker.PerformScriptWithOption JavaScript function. JavaScript in a web viewer can now call this function to run a FileMaker script and pass the new option parameter to control how a currently running FileMaker script is handled. See Options for handling the current script when starting new scripts.
November 2020: In FileMaker WebDirect, the notification dialog box for downloading files didn’t follow the Japanese word wrap rules.
November 2020: FileMaker WebDirect didn’t display some of the buttons in Microsoft Edge.

APIs, technologies, or features to be deprecated

As FileMaker Cloud evolves, the list of supported technologies, APIs, and features will change. As part of this evolution, certain operating systems versions, hardware, and features may be deprecated in favor of newer ones. Although deprecation does not mean the immediate deletion of an item, you should migrate your solution away from deprecated technologies, because these technologies may be removed in a future version of the product.

For the latest information about deprecated APIs, technologies, and features, search the Knowledge Base.