Hello all.....I'm just blown away by Alpha Five. I used to do some basic Access and Excel VBA programming, but nothing complex. Its been years. In the last three weeks without writing more than a couple of lines of code I've written a complex application that just blows away anything I've done before, even projects with tons of code. So far it is just a quick and dirty app to get us capturing data, but I'm starting now to work on a pretty interface, but I have a couple of basic questions.
For background, I'm using v11 and this is a web based project. I'm hosting my own app server on an old computer on the local network in my office.
1. I've had to make some structural changes to a table in my database. The problem is that my data is live on the server, so I can't overwrite the table with the new fields for fear of losing the data that has been entered. What's the best way to make a change to a live table without losing data?
2. All of the individual files in my database are backed up nightly, I know that real time backup would be better, but short of that, is backing up the web server directory and the directory holding all of the tables sufficient for recovery in the event of a problem? Along those same lines, if I wanted to copy a table to my laptop (which I use for development) can I just copy the DBF file, or is there more to it than that? And, along those lines, is DBF the format of choice? We're not going to have huge amounts of data or simultaneous users, but since I'm at a reasonably early stage I wonder if I should be considering other formats for the back end.
3. I see that there is an audit trail feature that logs to a text file. I'd actually like to log that data to a table and make it available to users. We are moving lots of old data over as time permits and I want users to be able to see what others have added recently. Is there any way to do that easily, or will I have to parse that data out of the text file?
Thanks in advance. I apologize if any of these questions duplicate other threads, I've tried to find answers but the forums and documentation are a little overwhelming at times. Soooo much info..
Thanks,
Chris
For background, I'm using v11 and this is a web based project. I'm hosting my own app server on an old computer on the local network in my office.
1. I've had to make some structural changes to a table in my database. The problem is that my data is live on the server, so I can't overwrite the table with the new fields for fear of losing the data that has been entered. What's the best way to make a change to a live table without losing data?
2. All of the individual files in my database are backed up nightly, I know that real time backup would be better, but short of that, is backing up the web server directory and the directory holding all of the tables sufficient for recovery in the event of a problem? Along those same lines, if I wanted to copy a table to my laptop (which I use for development) can I just copy the DBF file, or is there more to it than that? And, along those lines, is DBF the format of choice? We're not going to have huge amounts of data or simultaneous users, but since I'm at a reasonably early stage I wonder if I should be considering other formats for the back end.
3. I see that there is an audit trail feature that logs to a text file. I'd actually like to log that data to a table and make it available to users. We are moving lots of old data over as time permits and I want users to be able to see what others have added recently. Is there any way to do that easily, or will I have to parse that data out of the text file?
Thanks in advance. I apologize if any of these questions duplicate other threads, I've tried to find answers but the forums and documentation are a little overwhelming at times. Soooo much info..
Thanks,
Chris
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