Frequently asked questions
Can Otto migrate data between two files on the same server?
Yes but see next section for important considerations.
Can Otto use one server for both production and development?
Yes it can, but there are important considerations.
Sometimes it makes sense to have a production version and a development version of a file or files hosted on the same server. Otto handles this single server use case by letting you use different file names for the production and development versions of your files. This would have to be the case anyway, since FileMaker Server won't let you host two files with the same name. So yes you can do this. But read the next section for the important caveats.
If you have multifile system, read the next section for the caveats associated with changing names.
Can Otto change file names as part of a migration?
Yes it can. But it can't modify the files external data sources. The FileMaker Developer tool is the only thing that can rename files and change file refernces as well. So unless you change how your references between files are managed your multi-file system will be unable to connect to the files in the set.
BUT, you can solve this problem by using dynamic file references.
FileMaker will let you use $$Variable as an external data source path. If you set up all your file references to use variables you can set them to whatever they need to be on startup. You can skip the FileMaker Developer tool altogether. Otto will rename the files in the migration, and your files can set up the references to use the new file names.