Blast from the past: BDE and Win10 W/S

[Gary Mugford 12]

On 4/30/2019 at 8:36 AM, limelect said:

I still have a customer who uses BDE.

At a time i included   PdxRbd source into the program. 

I do not know if it can be in your case.

How ever from my experience of 20 years with my problem

"out of sync" it seem that they closed the computer with out closing

the program. Now a days it is OK. however if it once every 1/2 a year it mite happen so

i run PdxRbd.

At a time after long investigation there was no real solution to that problem.

Further more i did NOT GIVE PERMISSION to update from window 7 to 10 !!!

 

LimElect,

 

  I DID indeed find a handful of files in Level 5. Not ones that originated with us, but was sent to us for use in future production and delivery scheduling. I've made the changes and will now monitor new submissions in the future. Thanks for getting me to take a look. GM

[A.M. Hoornweg 144]

20 minutes ago, Gary Mugford said:

 

  All applications (the main one, 16, IIRC, applets) goes into T:\DataApp. The apps are with three exceptions, written in Delphi 7. The other three are written in Delphi XE7, the latest licence I own.

  All Config files for BDE and the Network file for BDE goes into T:\Idapi

  All databases go into T:\DataApp\Data.

 

OK, so you guys use network mappings for just about everything. 

 

I know for a fact that in our own network some mappings often "hickup" and get disconnected for fractions of a second. This might be related to windows group policies being enforced in the background as suggested in this post https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/5d9c7f34-5cf3-453a-a40a-3225e7995e9c/network-drive-keeps-loosing-connectivity?forum=win10itpronetworking but I don't know if the solution suggested in that thread actually works or not.  

 

 

As a workaround, would it be possible for you to ditch the "T:" mapping and instead use UNC names (\\server\sharename)? 

 

 

 

 

 

[Gary Mugford 12]

A.M.,

 

  I will pass along your link and the suggestion to Hardware Guy. I'm little dubious about the ability to use sharenames in the BDEadmin. But then again, I haven't tried. I will report on the latter sometime latter today. Thanks, GM

[jobo 1]

Didn't know about type A personalities, here in germany we only have "Alpha Männchen"  or a little nicer "Silberrücken" (different story). Seems to be medical terminology, invented for the main risk group for heart disease.

And please don’t get mad on me touching this, but you don't have to justify yourself for anything. You asked for help, I’m asking for facts (or source code), I won’t accuse anybody. Me giving an example for potential risk of (unnecessarily) provoke ressource conflicts during logging, is not about embarrassing you.

Ok, reading all these path settings, here's my most concrete and urgent note, although this is probably a wll known issue of BDE:

be aware of 150% correct or more specifically identical path settings for each and every BDE configuration accessing the same database! Now, how could they differ? Well, the later on suggested UNC notation might describe the same location like any share definition. In fact, even UNC alone makes 2 variants when mixing up IP and DNS usage. And of course you can have “endless” number of share definitions pointing to same file. This is poison to BDE.

And another hint:

Instead* of doing the big rework you could do little changes, improvements, tuning. Having and hoping about the all new fancy app is nice, but doesn’t solve existing problems. It’s a question of priorities, budgets and so on. Of course, that's at your discretion.

* probably in parallel

[Gary Mugford 12]

Jobo,

 

  Despite being Canadian, I actually spent my first five years in Baden-Baden, where my Dad was stationed with the RCAF. In fact, the middle brother in the family was born there. My first words were in German. Don't retain nearly enough of it, but I do treasure what little shared background we have. And if I have somehow given you the indication that I'm not appreciative of the time others have spent (including you) in trying to help me, then I have done you a disservice. I do, very much, appreciate help. Do I get defensive and/or proprietary over my work ... yeah, guilty. Some things I do were once cutting edge. Not any more, but in my prime, auto-auditing was considered a good thing in offices with a fair number of my client companies. 

 

  I did look at doing a direct port of the systems software at the client's but the business model of the company had changed over the years. The Boss had adopted many Japanese production principles. As I mentioned, we're mostly a same day or, at worst, next day kind of producer. The original software was designed around three-week lead times. Those don't exist any more. The fields for LeadTime and LeadTimeRawMat and LeadTimeProd are three unused wastages of database space any more. Still, the lure of pushing a few buttons and having  Delphi Parser do the port certainly enticed me enough to buy a year's licence. But there's no such thing as a free lunch and the fact that I used third-party DCU libraries and Paradox, made doing the port AND switching database backbone beyond the capabilities of Parser (a NIFTY product with great support). I had actually STARTED re-writes in 2009 and again in 2012, getting as far as show-and-tells of the new interface. Then, economics, health, changes in personnel at the company and a host of other excuses turned me back to a dam-leak fixer. Mostly in the form of standalone apps that achieved what we needed achieving right then and there. The Nov 2017 Waterloo to that plan made a re-write a necessity. And I'm just trying to buy time till I can take thirty years of programming business logic the way THEY think and roll it into the little I've learned about UI since then. In a new version of Delphi (to me). I can't use the same tools I've always used. I have to change to modern ways and means. And that change started long ago enough that it's end is closer than would be a port's end. 

 

  Which brings me back to BDE. The Hardware Guy and I enjoy rather tight-fisted control of the work stations, the network and the server. I'm very positive that there is no deviation of paths, shares and settings. To the point where there is a program monitoring the folder for changes to anything other than the PDOXUSRS.NET file.  We are using directly wired Microsoft Windows Server. No IP or DNS settings are involved. They exist for NexusDB. But again, we aren't using it yet. Just Paradox. With BDE. With Windows 10, which hates BDE. I'm going to fiddle with the UNC setting tomorrow to see if it is doable. And I'll leave it like that to start the new week (most especially MONDAY) and see what effect it has. If the micro-burst interruptions are the root cause of BDE's issues AND the UNC methodology FIXES that, then this whole thread can be deemed a success in the help process and documented for those few old goats like myself who need that information. And if it only SLOWS down the incident rate, this whole thing will have been worthwhile. And if it doesn't work, it STILL is worth the effort on my part. I will just be sad at wasting everybody else's time. 

 

  Danke, GM

[jobo 1]

Well, I|ve never been there, neither Canada, nor Baden Baden, just Karlsruhe, it's a nice place.

 

Nobody is forced to spent time, adding posts to forums threads. Even if it's not helpful to you, it might be to somebody else.

 

Ich drück Dir die Daumen!

 

[Gary Mugford 12]

Jobo,

 

Turns out I HAVE been to Karsruhe, but I don't remember it. My mother enjoyed the day trip there and so did Dad, apparently. My only vague memory is of fun in Madurodam in The Netherlands. 

 

Your best wishes SEEM to be having some success, so keep 'em crossed. Thanks for that. NO drama on Monday. None on Friday of last week too. Another respite like this, and maybe we can declare the problem curbed, maybe even eliminated.

 

Steps taken in no scientific method, so I don't know what had the best effect ...

• Confirmed all Paradox databases were Level 7. SIX databases provided by customers proved to be Level 5. I also made the Block size 32768 on all tables, about 20 were various sizes less than 32768 but none of them were approaching their record limits
• Had the registry setting suggested by Uwe Raabe added to the server.
• Went through EVERY table object in ALL applications and confirmed that dbiSaveChanges(tbl.Handle); was in the AfterPost event. Confirmed a clean bill of health.
• Switched the alias used to use UNC notation rather than direct mapping. 
• Previously, had changed the shortcut of the apps on the Win10 workstations to run the program (whichever one it was) in Windows 7 emulation mode. 
• I'm not sure if the microburst disconnection article prompted any changes by The Hardware Guy. But obviously mission critical if those disconnections are why we are running into Index Out of Date.

Do I believe I have found the secret mix to make BDE behave under Windows 10? No. Slow it down? Maybe. And as long as good-hearted helpers are keeping their fingers crossed, maybe an intolerable situation with a deadline of yesterday, or the day before, or last year or last decade, becomes something to concentrate on getting a good replacement out, rather than A QUICK replacement.

 

Thanks to all. GM