For RV Commander Run Time Users and Existing Users

Changes Going Forward with V1.6 of RV Commander and Filemaker Pro.

RV Commander is built on the Filemaker Pro platform – a powerful set of software and services for creating custom apps that work seamlessly across iPad, iPhone, Windows, Mac, and the web. Filemaker Inc. recently updated the Filemaker Pro development suite to Filemaker Pro 16, and introduced hundreds of new features that provide increased functionality for developers and users.

The run-time engine feature available in Filemaker Pro enabled developers to provide a special no-cost license to end users of Windows/Mac to run the database without having a full version of Filemaker Pro. This was great for a while, but the run-time engine no longer provides feature-for-feature compatibility with the latest version of Filemaker Pro.

We hope Filemaker will eventually replace the run-time engine on Windows/Mac with an equivalent to what they provide on the iOS platform – something like Filemaker Go which will allow users to run a database without having the full version installed. This would restore full feature-for-feature compatibility and allow developers to concentrate on just one version of the database that would run across Windows, Mac, and iOS.

We began developing RV Commander with Filemaker Pro 14, and provided major updates to the software when Filemaker Pro 15 came out. Naturally when Filemaker released Filemaker 16, we were excited about the possibilities for incorporating new features and functionality into RV Commander. Sometimes progress in one area means you may have to give up something in another area.

Due to a change that Filemaker Inc. introduced with Version 16 of Filemaker Pro last week, it will now be necessary to begin discontinuing support for the run-time versions of RV Commander.

Due to licensing restrictions and increased operating system security requirements for run-time applications within MacOS, we are being forced to begin thinking about retiring the run-time versions of RVC. But don’t worry, this doesn’t mean that RV Commander is going away – it’s not! It’s getting better and better with every new release.

We will continue to make the run-time’s available, as long as, Filemaker provides that capability in the software, but be aware that there will be a point in the future that they cut off run-times all together. There will also be a good chance that future versions of run-times will lose more of the old features as the Filemaker Platform continues to evolve.

The full-version and iOS versions of RVC share the same common database so from this point forward, we ask that you consider dropping the run-time version and going to the full—up version of Filemaker Pro 16.

We realize that while this will be a expense to some of you that are using the run-time versions, we feel strongly that it will be worth it in the long run as it will guarantee that all features in RV Commander will be available to you. The run-time versions had begun to develop limitations over the past 6-12 months to the point that the database would not provide an optimal experience for users. For example, the run-time versions no longer supported generation of charts and graphs – a feature we have begun to incorporate in our dashboards across RV Commander.

While this is a short- term impact, if you purchase Filemaker Pro 16, you will be ensured feature compatibility with the version we use in our development environment, and it will be much easier to do many of the normal maintenance tasks that had become difficult to execute in the run-time version.

So progress in this case is good!

For those making the move to the full-version of Filemaker Pro…

Grab a copy of Filemaker Pro 16 (regular or advanced vesion is OK) and then grab the new version of RVC V1_6 GM that is located DropBox.

You’ll make a backup copy of your existing RV Commander database through the RVC Commannder backup utility located under Setup, name it RVC Copy.fmp12 and save this file into the new folder that you have for RVC V1_6 GM file.

Open the new RVC V1-6 with Filemaker Pro 16 and go to the Setup Menu, Choose Import Previous Versions, making sure the backup copy you made earlier is located in the same folder as the new V1_6 file and click on the Import Previous Version.

Once the import Is complete, you can then begin to use your V1_6 data file.

Remember to make frequent backups! If you accidentally lose the data that you have entered, and don’t have a good backup, there is no way to get it back.