Recovered from the most dubious case of FileMaker Server crash using advanced FileMaker recovery software

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I have been using FileMaker for quite a long time now. I am working with a firm and there my job is to manage and supervise the FileMaker system. But from the very beginning, I have been facing serious troubles while using a table in one of the files. Every time I try to create a new record or edit an existing one and commit changes, a deadly coffee cup appears and forces me to quit the application. This is seen with all the users on the network. Whenever someone makes changes to the table, it crashes. I have verified if there are script triggers that ran upon commit or change. But surprisingly, I cannot find a single script. Even on using layouts from external files, I experience the same thing.

To work around this, I usually reboot the server. After restarting, everything seems to be fixed and no more problems are encountered. But this problem has become persistent as of now and concerns me every time the whole company business comes to a halt. We have an archive of extremely large-sized database files and possibly there are thousands to millions of connections to the database each single day. This is because of huge number of clients and also through XML Web Publishing. This causes a lot of mess.

We don’t have a backup that can help to get away with the issue. I am planning to repair the database. But this could be dangerous as it can further intensify the problem. I have verified and disabled the server scripts, if any. Also, one more time it crashes when I attempt to run a database report. I get empty files with no data.

Certainly, it appears as a case of corruption. As the file has thousands of tables, relationships, constraints, and layouts, I fear to come to a conclusion. The problem would have been much simple if I tried to resolve it in the first place. I should probably create a copy of the database and try deleting the offending table. I may be required to rebuild the whole database.

I recently learned about commercial third-party FileMaker database recovery software. One of my friends suggested Stellar Phoenix FileMaker Recovery. The software is adept at repairing corrupt files of FileMaker Pro Advance 7.x -11.x versions. Moreover, the tool can run on Mac-Intel based computer with Mac OS X 10.5 and above. I will try this one out and see if it works for me.