Steve Stover wrote in message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
>
>Hi Gary, thanks!
>
>Yes, I definitely want the database to be stand-alone. The palm program is
>a subset of a large LabVIEW setup program. We use the palm to collect
>config data on a bunch of "black boxes" - lots easier than carrying a
laptop
>around. With the stand-alone database, I can do a hotsynch to get the
>config info onto a PC, then pull the database file straight into Excel. If
>the database is part of the application, I will need an (unknown) operation
>to get the database out of the application after a hotsynch. Thus there
>would be two steps to dumping config info in the field, instead of one.
>
>Hope that clarifies why I'm doing what I'm doing. It sounds like I will
>need separate creator Ids for both applications and both databases.
>Actually, I don't care about separate Ids for the databases, as long as
>differing names will give me separate databases. I'll have to investigate
>that...
>
>PS all of the apps I'm working with now are just for in-house use and
>convenience right now, but soon to change...
>
Yes that clarifies what you are doing ... what needs more clarification
now is how this thing really works. Databases are not stored "within"
the application. They are still separate. Three are three attributes
to a database: the ID, the type, and the name. The ID and type
are both four-byte values, such as 'appl', 'REAd', ''Font', 'Data',
'zrCT' ... well, durned near anything. Although each byte tends
to be in the printable ascii range, I am not sure that this
is required. Note that in code these characters are surrounded
by single quites as if they were char constants and not the double
quotes typically used for strings. An ID or type could also be
represented as a long integer (generally in hex) f'r instance
'appl' could also be represented as 0x6170706C, although this
is less common.
There can only be one db w/ the type of 'appl' with any given ID
on the device at any time. This uniqueness attribute does not
apply to other types. F'r instance there are usually many dbs
with a creator/type pair of 'REAd'/'TEXt' on your device (those
are the standard palm "Doc" documents). The only truely unique
aspect for any database is the name -- which must be unique
with respect to all other databases on the device regardless of
their type/creater. F'r instance if you have a Doc w/ the name
"videos", you can not also have a JFile db w/ the same name!
The Palm launcher, treats multiple databases sharing the same ID
specially. When you delete the database with type 'appl' of any given
ID ('xxxx') then all other databases with the same ID will also be removed
from the device. This prevents unusable data from cluttering up your
valuable memory when you ditch an old app.
Since the palm launcher groups databases together by ID, you
can make use of a special tool (such as ZarfCatalog, which
you can find on PalmGear) to assure yourself that they are indeed
still separate databases. Each will appear in the backup directory
individually ... assuming of course that their backup bit has been
set. No "unknown operation" to extract them would be required.
The only reason to -not- use the same ID for the app and it's
data is if for some reason you want the data to remain on the
PDA when the application that uses it is deleted. For something
as specialized as you are talking about I don't think this is really
something you need to do.
--
-Richard M. Hartman
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
186,000 mi/sec: not just a good idea, it's the LAW!
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