4th Dimension Learning Basics

This page is part of the 4th Dimension Learning Basics series, a set of notes originally written for developers migrating from FileMaker Pro (FMP) to 4D. The topic here is web hosting — specifically, how the two platforms differ when you want to publish a database-driven application to the browser. The comparison is instructive because it exposes a deeper architectural difference between the two products, and that difference still shapes how you think about 4D deployment today.

Key Takeaways

• FileMaker Pro’s Standard Edition could host databases on the web using CDML (Claris Dynamic Markup Language), but licensing and performance limits made it unsuitable for real traffic.
• The Standard Edition restricted hosting to 10 unique IP addresses over a rolling 12-hour window — a hard ceiling on audience size, not a soft guideline.
• FileMaker’s web performance was widely considered poor without a third-party accelerator such as Lasso, and licensing terms often prohibited that workaround anyway.
• 4D’s web hosting is built into both the 4D Standard Edition and 4D Server, requires no HTML or CDML authoring, and can be tested for short periods without a dedicated license.
• Unlimited 4D web hosting historically required the 4D Internet Extension license.
• The practical lesson: choose a platform based on how it publishes data to the web, not just how it stores it.

Why Web Hosting Is the Real Differentiator

Most database comparisons focus on table design, form builders, and scripting languages. Those matter, but they are largely internal concerns — they affect how pleasant the tool is for you. Web hosting affects how the application reaches everyone else, and that is where FileMaker Pro and 4D diverged sharply in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

FileMaker Pro’s approach was to bolt web publishing onto a desktop-first product. 4D’s approach was to treat the web as a first-class deployment target from the start. That single design decision cascades into licensing, performance, and the amount of code you have to write.

If you are evaluating either platform — or learning 4D after years in FileMaker — understanding this history explains why 4D’s web story feels almost suspiciously simple compared to what you may be used to.

FileMaker Pro Web Hosting and CDML

The Standard Edition of FileMaker Pro allowed users to host FMP database files on the web. The mechanism was CDML (Claris Dynamic Markup Language), a set of special tags you embedded inside ordinary HTML pages. When a browser requested a page, FileMaker would parse those tags, run the corresponding database operations, and substitute the results into the HTML before returning it.

CDML was genuinely clever for its time. It let a developer with HTML skills — but no server-side programming language — build a searchable, editable web front end to a FileMaker database. You wrote something like a search form in HTML, dropped in CDML tags to define the query and the results layout, and FileMaker handled the rest.

But the approach carried two serious problems, and the original notes call out both.

The 10-IP licensing restriction

The Standard Edition had a software and licensing restriction limiting hosting to 10 unique IP addresses over a rolling 12-hour period. This is worth pausing on, because it is easy to misread as “10 simultaneous users.”

It is not. It is 10 distinct visitors within any 12-hour window. Once the eleventh unique IP address arrives, that visitor is locked out — even if the first ten have long since left. For a small internal tool used by a handful of colleagues, that might be tolerable. For anything public-facing, it is fatal. A single search engine crawler can burn through your allowance in minutes.

Performance and the Lasso workaround

FileMaker’s built-in web engine was also slow. The standard remedy in the FileMaker community was to put a third-party application in front of it — most famously Lasso, a middleware product from Blue World Communications that spoke to FileMaker databases and generated HTML far more efficiently than CDML could.

The catch, as the original notes point out, is that the licensing restrictions prohibited this arrangement on the Standard Edition. So the workaround existed but was not permitted where it was most needed.

FileMaker did offer an Unlimited version (around $1,000 at the time) that removed the IP restriction. But even Unlimited remained slow and, in practice, still wanted something like Lasso in front of it to be usable under load. You were paying to remove a licensing cap, not to solve the underlying performance problem.

4D Web Hosting: Built In, Not Bolted On

4D took the opposite approach. Web hosting is a native capability of the product, and the original notes describe it as “extremely easy” — a claim that deserves unpacking rather than taking on faith.

The key points:

• Both 4D Standard Edition and 4D Server can host a database to the web. You do not need a separate web-publishing product tier.
• Testing is free. Both editions allow you to host a database for up to 2 hours at a time without a web hosting license. This is a genuine development convenience: you can build, test, and iterate on a web front end without buying anything.
• Unlimited hosting requires the 4D Internet Extension license (around $1,000 historically).
• No HTML, CDML, or other markup code is required. This is the headline difference. 4D generates the web interface from the database structure and forms you have already built.

That last point is the one that changes how you work. In the CDML model, you maintain two parallel artifacts: your database and your HTML templates. Every field you expose on the web has to be wired up by hand in markup. In 4D, the forms you designed for the desktop client can be published to the web, which means a single design effort serves both audiences.

The original notes defer the mechanics to a later installment in the series and to the manual shipped with the 4D Standard Edition. That is a reasonable division of labor — the how is a topic of its own — but the why is what matters here.

Comparing the Two Approaches

Dimension	FileMaker Pro (Standard)	4D (Standard / Server)
Web technology	CDML tags embedded in HTML	Native, generated from database forms
Markup authoring required	Yes — you write HTML + CDML	No
Visitor limit	10 unique IPs per rolling 12 hours	None (with Internet Extension license)
Free testing window	Not applicable	Up to 2 hours at a time, no license
Performance under load	Slow; typically needs Lasso or similar	Handled by the 4D web engine
Third-party accelerator permitted	Prohibited under Standard licensing	Not required
Unlimited-hosting license	FMP Unlimited (~$1,000)	4D Internet Extension (~$1,000)

The table makes the trade-off plain. Both platforms charged roughly the same order of magnitude for unlimited hosting. The difference was what you got for it: FileMaker removed a cap but left the performance problem, while 4D removed the cap and provided the engine.

How to Decide in Practice

If you are choosing a platform today — or deciding how much to invest in learning 4D’s web features — the historical comparison suggests a set of questions worth asking:

• Who is the audience? A handful of named internal users is a very different problem from an open web application. The 10-IP rule existed precisely because FileMaker assumed the former.
• How many artifacts will you maintain? If publishing to the web means maintaining a second, parallel set of templates, your maintenance burden roughly doubles. Prefer platforms where one design serves multiple channels.
• What is the escape hatch? If performance becomes a problem, can you add middleware, or does licensing forbid it? A workaround you are not allowed to use is not a workaround.
• What does the free tier actually let you do? 4D’s 2-hour testing window is a real development aid. Evaluate whether a platform lets you build and validate before you buy.
• Where does the vendor’s roadmap point? A product that treats the web as native will keep improving it. A product that treats it as an add-on will keep treating it as one.

For developers coming from FileMaker, the practical takeaway is that 4D’s web hosting is not a feature you bolt on at the end of a project. It is available from the moment you have a database and a form, which means you can prototype a web interface early and let it inform your data model — rather than discovering late that your structure does not map cleanly to a browser.

Where This Fits in the Learning Path

This page sits in the “Other” section of the series, alongside topics like data charting, plug-ins, and tools and utilities. That placement is slightly misleading: web hosting is not a peripheral concern. For many small-team builders, the ability to publish a database to the browser is the entire reason to choose a platform.

The surrounding sections — system requirements, program structures, networking differences, runtime differences, the compiler, and resources — all feed into the same decision. Networking differences in particular are worth reading alongside this page, because the way a product handles network clients (desktop or browser) is closely related to how it handles web clients.

If you are working through the series in order, treat this page as the moment where the FileMaker-to-4D transition stops being about syntax and starts being about architecture. The syntax you can learn in an afternoon. The architecture is what determines whether your application can grow.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is CDML and why did it matter?

CDML stands for Claris Dynamic Markup Language, the tag-based system FileMaker Pro used to publish databases to the web. It let developers embed database operations inside ordinary HTML pages, so a page could run a query and render results without a separate server-side programming language. It mattered because it was, for a time, the only way to put a FileMaker database on the web.

Why was the 10-IP restriction such a problem?

The restriction counted unique IP addresses over a rolling 12-hour window, not concurrent users. Once ten distinct visitors had accessed the site in that window, everyone else was blocked until the window rolled forward. A single automated crawler could exhaust the allowance almost immediately, which made the Standard Edition unusable for any genuinely public site.

Did 4D really require no HTML or CDML?

According to the original notes, yes — hosting a 4D database on the web did not require writing HTML, CDML, or other markup. 4D generated the web interface from the database structure and forms you had already designed. The mechanics are covered in the 4D manual and in later installments of this series.

Can I try 4D web hosting without buying a license?

Yes. Both the 4D Standard Edition and 4D Server allow you to host a database to the web for up to two hours at a time without a web hosting license. That window is intended for testing and development, and it lets you validate a web front end before committing to the 4D Internet Extension license for unlimited hosting.

Was Lasso a legitimate solution for FileMaker?

Lasso, from Blue World Communications, was a widely used middleware product that sat in front of FileMaker databases and generated HTML more efficiently than CDML. It was technically effective, but FileMaker’s Standard Edition licensing prohibited using it in that configuration, so the people who needed it most could not legally deploy it.

Does this history still matter if I am learning 4D today?

It matters as a way of understanding why 4D’s web hosting works the way it does. The platform was designed with the web as a native deployment target rather than an add-on, and that design choice still shapes how forms, data structures, and licensing fit together. Knowing the contrast with FileMaker makes the 4D model easier to reason about.

Further Reading

• Web hosting service — Wikipedia, for background on the hosting model itself.
• FileMaker — Wikipedia, for the history of the platform and its evolution beyond the CDML era.
• 4D (programming language) — Wikipedia, for the broader context of the 4D platform.
• World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) — the standards body whose HTML specifications CDML pages were built on.