I have just taken advantage of the upgrade offer to go to v9.5. Being a good little programmer <g> I read the instructions about upgrading and doing an unload/reload first to make sure that the database(s) are in perfect condition.
I have an RMD file that does this for me and which has worked for years and kept my databases in prime condition. Something went wrong this time and I got an error message about “End-of-data encountered”. This rang bells – quite wildly – but I couldn’t remember or find why: Razzak & Karen to the rescue. Immediate problem solved – cause still unknown. I have been looking over the last few days - but not too intensely - trying to find out what I’d done to cause a problem that seemed unrelated to the error. Sleeping on it, you might say, trying to let the subconscious become conscious. Today, the penny/(cent) dropped: Some weeks ago, I tried to change a table to a view – no problem there but I decided to revert to a table and work around a few minor difficulties when using a view. (It’s not quite that simple as I needed to keep a newly named table with the non-concatenated data, change forms and reports.) The table used First_Name and Main_Name columns with a computed concatenated Full_Name column which has for a long time been a waste of space. Using a view to create the Full_Name table – which is used in a rule to prevent duplicates – seemed like a good idea. It is a good idea but the change caused a problem. The table had many foreign keys based on the Full_Name. For some, probably quite sensible, reason the tables and columns on which these keys were based lost their name link to the table that had been changed to a view and back again. Once I had seen what had happened it was easy enough to put right – those keys with missing names needed to be deleted and re-instated correctly. Time consuming was the only thing of note. Now that the database looks right – I still need to double check – I can convert to v9.5. It may not be a problem that many come across but converting tables to views must be a relatively common change. Regards, Alastair.
