Alpha Software Mobile Development Tools:   Alpha Anywhere    |   Alpha TransForm subscribe to our YouTube Channel  Follow Us on LinkedIn  Follow Us on Twitter  Follow Us on Facebook

Announcement

Collapse

The Alpha Software Forum Participation Guidelines

The Alpha Software Forum is a free forum created for Alpha Software Developer Community to ask for help, exchange ideas, and share solutions. Alpha Software strives to create an environment where all members of the community can feel safe to participate. In order to ensure the Alpha Software Forum is a place where all feel welcome, forum participants are expected to behave as follows:
  • Be professional in your conduct
  • Be kind to others
  • Be constructive when giving feedback
  • Be open to new ideas and suggestions
  • Stay on topic


Be sure all comments and threads you post are respectful. Posts that contain any of the following content will be considered a violation of your agreement as a member of the Alpha Software Forum Community and will be moderated:
  • Spam.
  • Vulgar language.
  • Quotes from private conversations without permission, including pricing and other sales related discussions.
  • Personal attacks, insults, or subtle put-downs.
  • Harassment, bullying, threatening, mocking, shaming, or deriding anyone.
  • Sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist, or otherwise discriminatory jokes and language.
  • Sexually explicit or violent material, links, or language.
  • Pirated, hacked, or copyright-infringing material.
  • Encouraging of others to engage in the above behaviors.


If a thread or post is found to contain any of the content outlined above, a moderator may choose to take one of the following actions:
  • Remove the Post or Thread - the content is removed from the forum.
  • Place the User in Moderation - all posts and new threads must be approved by a moderator before they are posted.
  • Temporarily Ban the User - user is banned from forum for a period of time.
  • Permanently Ban the User - user is permanently banned from the forum.


Moderators may also rename posts and threads if they are too generic or do not property reflect the content.

Moderators may move threads if they have been posted in the incorrect forum.

Threads/Posts questioning specific moderator decisions or actions (such as "why was a user banned?") are not allowed and will be removed.

The owners of Alpha Software Corporation (Forum Owner) reserve the right to remove, edit, move, or close any thread for any reason; or ban any forum member without notice, reason, or explanation.

Community members are encouraged to click the "Report Post" icon in the lower left of a given post if they feel the post is in violation of the rules. This will alert the Moderators to take a look.

Alpha Software Corporation may amend the guidelines from time to time and may also vary the procedures it sets out where appropriate in a particular case. Your agreement to comply with the guidelines will be deemed agreement to any changes to it.



Bonus TIPS for Successful Posting

Try a Search First
It is highly recommended that a Search be done on your topic before posting, as many questions have been answered in prior posts. As with any search engine, the shorter the search term, the more "hits" will be returned, but the more specific the search term is, the greater the relevance of those "hits". Searching for "table" might well return every message on the board while "tablesum" would greatly restrict the number of messages returned.

When you do post
First, make sure you are posting your question in the correct forum. For example, if you post an issue regarding Desktop applications on the Mobile & Browser Applications board , not only will your question not be seen by the appropriate audience, it may also be removed or relocated.

The more detail you provide about your problem or question, the more likely someone is to understand your request and be able to help. A sample database with a minimum of records (and its support files, zipped together) will make it much easier to diagnose issues with your application. Screen shots of error messages are especially helpful.

When explaining how to reproduce your problem, please be as detailed as possible. Describe every step, click-by-click and keypress-by-keypress. Otherwise when others try to duplicate your problem, they may do something slightly different and end up with different results.

A note about attachments
You may only attach one file to each message. Attachment file size is limited to 2MB. If you need to include several files, you may do so by zipping them into a single archive.

If you forgot to attach your files to your post, please do NOT create a new thread. Instead, reply to your original message and attach the file there.

When attaching screen shots, it is best to attach an image file (.BMP, .JPG, .GIF, .PNG, etc.) or a zip file of several images, as opposed to a Word document containing the screen shots. Because Word documents are prone to viruses, many message board users will not open your Word file, therefore limiting their ability to help you.

Similarly, if you are uploading a zipped archive, you should simply create a .ZIP file and not a self-extracting .EXE as many users will not run your EXE file.
See more
See less

3523 .... lots of issues

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

    #61
    Re: 3523 .... lots of issues

    Glenn,

    I believe the issues are:

    Db Corruption (in general?)
    Memo field corruption
    Image field corruption
    Embedded browse data overwrites
    Embedded browse bad behaviour
    Form calculations not firing

    I don't know exactly which builds these were introduced but they are mostly in the lastest build and some going back to Dec. 26.

    David

    Comment


      #62
      Re: 3523 .... lots of issues

      I was not having many issues with the latest patch, but things started to go strange with a form refresh and adding records to browse. In another post I mentioned that I did not have all the apparent problems as I turned off the new autobackup process

      I found that the DB I was having the problems with, I had not turned it off. I turned it off and things seemed to get back to normal (for now). I think there may be some syncing issues with this process and I am not sure just how effective the realtime backup process is when you are always doing development work in real time as well. I had often found my scripts not getting changed until I rebooted Alpha.

      Not sure if this is some of the cause, but again some food for thought.
      -----------------------------------------------
      Regards
      Mark Pearson
      [email protected]
      Youtube channel
      Website

      Comment


        #63
        Re: 3523 .... lots of issues

        Silly question, but how do you switch off the Auto Backup!
        Chris Tanti
        Technical Support

        Nuance & Fathom Ltd - The data-driven marketing agency

        Comment


          #64
          Re: 3523 .... lots of issues

          Originally posted by Davidk View Post
          Glenn,

          I believe the issues are:

          Db Corruption (in general?)
          Memo field corruption
          Image field corruption
          Embedded browse data overwrites
          Embedded browse bad behaviour
          Form calculations not firing

          I don't know exactly which builds these were introduced but they are mostly in the lastest build and some going back to Dec. 26.

          David
          David .... thanks for laying out the details .... the more people can read about .... hopefully they can avoid issues. My issue still remains .... which patch release is the most stable?? ... lol

          Comment


            #65
            Re: 3523 .... lots of issues

            Chris,
            From another very recent thread I gleaned this....

            Layouts - Auto Backup - V10 introduced auto backup of Layouts (Forms, Reports, Browse, Label, Letters, and Field Rules) - You can now turn off this feature using the a5.system_mode_set() command.
            Examples:
            'Check status of feature
            ? a5.System_Mode_Get("auto_backup")
            = "True"
            'Turn feature off
            a5.System_Mode_set("auto_backup","false")
            Mike
            __________________________________________
            It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know.
            It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.
            Henry David Thoreau
            __________________________________________



            Comment


              #66
              Re: 3523 .... lots of issues

              Glenn, I'm finding 2736_3523 to be pretty good.

              There was a new patch released today - March 16 - however the bug list does not report anything about database corruption or the browse bug I submitted. I'll put it into a testing environment and have a look. It's hard trusting this stuff through.

              David

              Comment


                #67
                Re: 3523 .... lots of issues

                Originally posted by Davidk View Post
                Glenn,

                I believe the issues are:

                Db Corruption (in general?)
                Memo field corruption
                Image field corruption
                Embedded browse data overwrites
                Embedded browse bad behaviour
                Form calculations not firing

                I don't know exactly which builds these were introduced but they are mostly in the lastest build and some going back to Dec. 26.

                David
                Just as a different perspective on this.....

                I have a company using 2787-3538 with no issues and the app I developed for this client is touching pretty much every topic above. I am not saying you are not having problems because you can see them! :) But, the app I am referencing is stable under this release it seems. There are about 20 users. All workstations are WinXP. Running in network optimization mode. There are probably 50 photos a day added to this app using image reference fields (2 in each record - one for a thumbnail shown in a browse and one for the full size image). There are approx 75,000 photos in this app so far with no issues. The app also makes extensive use of memo fields for notes and I have not had any issues. I followed Dr. Wayne's advice for memo fields FWIW.

                All of my data entry forms are modal. There is no direct entering / editing of data in embedded browses. The modal form forces the user to complete the add/edit before moving on. I have found that this method gives the app a better chance to have correct data because the user does not accidentally do something unintended. In other words, they have to choose to either add or edit a record by clicking a button.

                I had one issue in the build prior to 3538 where running topparent.queryrun() was not acting properly. I submitted a bug report to Selwyn with a demo DB showing the problem and the fix came out in 3538 a day later.

                If you are coding anything, make use of UDF's as Ira has said on this board many times. The reasons are many...but the payoff in app stability is a biggie. More info on Ira's site

                As others have said......if you have a version that is running fine....NEVER patch it. If you need a feature or a bug fix in a later release then yeah....ya gotta do it....otherwise stay put.


                It seems there are some issues with 3538 since so many people are having troubles....but I have been ok with it. FWIW, I only patched because I need a fix on the web side of things.

                Anyway....just wanted to throw out my experiences with 3538.

                Regards,

                Jeff

                Comment


                  #68
                  Re: 3523 .... lots of issues

                  Jeff .... can you explain what was going on with your queryrun issue?


                  Oh and by the way, good comments on the whole discussion of 3523, but if you haven't experienced any issues(yet), count your blessing. Maybe its because you are using the defensive coding techniques that others have suggested is the way to go. Im not suggesting that going the path of least resistance is not a smart thing to do .... and believe me, Im doing it on a daily basis ..... but, shouldnt we also work a parallel path to get functionality that is supposed to work, working???

                  Glenn

                  Comment


                    #69
                    Re: 3523 .... lots of issues

                    Hi Glenn

                    The issue I was experiencing had to do with an embedded browse and using queryrun() to find one specific record after a user entered the particular "record id" they were looking for in a vairable field and then hitting a custom "find" button that ran the queryrun(). The issue was that the record would be found and centered (vertically in the rows shown) in the embedded browse.....but all the records around it were still there visually. The rub was that the embedded browse should have only shown one record at this point.

                    I think one thing that gets overlooked sometimes on the board is whether the apps folks are using are networked or not as that affects how one should code / construct their program. I feel your pain in that the issues you are having are very real.....believe me I have been there with Alpha. The beauty of Alpha is that there is normally about 5 ways to do everything. Which is both a blessing and a curse! :)

                    I don't remember the exact version (I think V7 or V8) but I had another app that was working fine and when I upgraded things broke.....by that I mean....Alpha changed the behavior of the event I was using (OnRowChange). I was like %$^&*!@###$$%. But, after backing up 5 yards and punting.....I poked around and moved the code to the OnFetch event and all was well again...but it yanked my chain pretty hard at the time. :) I get frustrated with Alpha - but overall it is killer software.

                    Unfortunately, in my case at least, I feel compelled to code defensively. The darn users are always doing stuff that I would never even dream they would do! :) In my 5 or 6 years of using Alpha, I have only had one instance of "corruption" and that was an index (it actually just happened a month ago). I dug into the code and it turns out it was me.....I fixed my code and no more problems.

                    As you may know, V9 had some serious "unhandled exception issues" that many folks reported. I was one of them. I FINALLY listened to Ira and really started making use of UDF's at this time. The more I "compartmentalized" my code into UDF's - the more stable that app became. The big bonus is that it is a ton easier to maintain your apps once you use UDF's....there are just no downsides!

                    Regards,

                    Jeff

                    Comment


                      #70
                      Re: 3523 .... lots of issues

                      Originally posted by jkletrovets View Post
                      Unfortunately, in my case at least, I feel compelled to code defensively. The darn users are always doing stuff that I would never even dream they would do! :)
                      Jeff
                      :D I bet the developers at Alpha headquarters say that every day as well.
                      Tim Kiebert
                      Eagle Creek Citrus
                      A complex system that does not work is invariably found to have evolved from a simpler system that worked just fine.

                      Comment


                        #71
                        Re: 3523 .... lots of issues

                        Hi Jeff & Glenn,

                        Originally posted by jkletrovets View Post
                        ....Unfortunately, in my case at least, I feel compelled to code defensively. The darn users are always doing stuff that I would never even dream they would do! :) In my 5 or 6 years of using Alpha, I have only had one instance of "corruption" and that was an index (it actually just happened a month ago). I dug into the code and it turns out it was me.....I fixed my code and no more problems.
                        Programming defensively is a technique I have eluded to in the past here on the message board, but I don't think I actually ever used the name. But I have often said, and encourage people to write code that detects cases, THAT ABSOLUTELY CAN NEVER HAPPEN, BUT SOMEHOW DOES!

                        For example, you run a query on a table that has records that must always return at least 1 record, and can never return 0 records. Even so, by checking and handling the 0 record case, you will trap an error that supposely can never happen, yet sure enough, there is a case that pops up that returns that IMPOSSIBLE value.

                        The choices for defensive coding include
                        • Reporting the error
                        • Handling the case in a reasonable way
                        • Ignoring the error and continuing
                        • Noting the error and continuing
                        I generally report the error (or store the error info for later reporting), and allow the user to choose to continue or cancel.

                        Originally posted by jkletrovets View Post
                        As you may know, V9 had some serious "unhandled exception issues" that many folks reported. I was one of them. I FINALLY listened to Ira and really started making use of UDF's at this time. The more I "compartmentalized" my code into UDF's - the more stable that app became. The big bonus is that it is a ton easier to maintain your apps once you use UDF's....there are just no downsides!
                        Compartmentalizing code is another important technique. It helps for testing pieces, maintenance, and clarity.

                        E.g. looking at an older version of my CSDA Code Utility desktop saving and restore code, it has roughly 12000 lines of code, 9200 of which are actual non-comment lines, which would be very difficult to follow if it was one piece of code. That version is divided up into 32 functions, which averages out to about 287 lines per function, a much more manageable size for understanding and repair. Any "tricks" are isolated to small sections. Had I not used functions to ,
                        compartmentalize, some of which are used many times over, the code would be probably be many times the current size and probably a nightmare to repair.

                        In another recent case, my CSDA Screen Capture utility had an issue with V10 in terms of issues with capturing the position and sizes of docked panels. However, the code for doing this was in 1 function. While difficult to solve the problem generically, across A5v6 to A5v10, I only changed one, 600 line function, and everything was better. And while I was changing the code, it was significantly improved to get the sizes and positions for many odd cases, and in a way that should be more immune to changes made in the future. And since the same routine is shared by the CSDA Code Utility, I did not have to make any changes there.
                        Regards,

                        Ira J. Perlow
                        Computer Systems Design


                        CSDA A5 Products
                        New - Free CSDA DiagInfo - v1.39, 30 Apr 2013
                        CSDA Barcode Functions

                        CSDA Code Utility
                        CSDA Screen Capture


                        Comment


                          #72
                          Re: 3523 .... lots of issues

                          I am experiencing the same problem: records disappearing (as if a delete AND a pack had executed) and others (at the same time) duplicated.

                          This has been happening since at least the Dec update on V10. It is happening on two different applications running in different locations on different OS (XP and Vista). Both applications hve been running just fine for many years (10 for 1 and 4 for the other).

                          My users definitely do not have the developer software, RT only.

                          I have been trying everything i can think of for the last 2.5 months... very little sleep! (very bad for my health!) and the clients are... unhappy!

                          I have just sent a bug report but i sympathize with Alpha... the problem is not easy to duplicate.... i have never been able to get records to 'disappear or duplicate'... but the clients sure can. It's happening every 2 or three days now! No indication seems to be observed until the user goes somewhere to look at the data or produce a report and the missing / duplicated record is then observed.

                          Desperately need help!

                          Comment


                            #73
                            Re: 3523 .... lots of issues

                            David,

                            If you can zip up a sample of your app or a new app with the offending form(s) and sample non critical data....I am sure some of us will take a look at it to see if we can see anything that might be done to help you.

                            Regards,

                            Jeff

                            Comment


                              #74
                              Re: 3523 .... lots of issues

                              thanks for the quick reply! As always this community is very generous and helpful!!

                              I have sent small section of the app to alpha but i fear that it won't be much help. I cannot isolate the problem. It occurs every day or two in different tables and none of the users reports any problems entering data. The problem is experienced when people go back & view the data in a form browse or report. ie record missing and at the same time another record (seemingly unrelated to the 1st) is duplicated. The duplication occurs even though the key field eg Consultantnum is autoincrement & should be unique.

                              I will continue to try to isolate the problem to the point where i can duplicate it. As soon as i can do this i will post an example.

                              I can't send the entire app. because there is lots of proprietary / private info.

                              Thanks!!

                              Comment


                                #75
                                Re: 3523 .... lots of issues

                                Hi David,

                                Originally posted by David Boomer View Post
                                I am experiencing the same problem: records disappearing (as if a delete AND a pack had executed) and others (at the same time) duplicated.
                                Assuming we are talking a dbf table, it is not possible to do a pack unless all other users do not have that table open, and for any table of any real size, a pack takes some time, so user should be able to see it happen. If it was deleted, it's unlikely a pack also happened, which means the data is still in the file.

                                You have not said if you are accessing a table or a set, but a set depends on a correct index for linking the tables. If the index get's bad, that means records in the children will mysteriously seem to disappear, but they should still be in the individual tables.

                                To check indexes of any particular table, go to the A5 Control Panel, select Tables tab, then in the menu, under Table, select Utilities, Check Indexes... and verify all indexes are correct on the offending systems

                                Originally posted by David Boomer View Post
                                It is happening on two different applications running in different locations on different OS (XP and Vista).
                                This is useful info.

                                Originally posted by David Boomer View Post
                                Both applications hve been running just fine for many years (10 for 1 and 4 for the other).
                                This is no info. What do you mean 10 for 1, 4 for other? What needs to be known is how many users using the application by themselves experiencing problems on different networks, and how many different groups of users sharing the data over a network are experiencing problems. This tells us 1 whether it is single/multi-user problem, and 2, whether there is a network problem if the issue only happens on 1 network.

                                Originally posted by David Boomer View Post
                                My users definitely do not have the developer software, RT only.
                                This is useful info.

                                Originally posted by David Boomer View Post
                                Desperately need help!
                                This is free help here, donated by many users and developers of Alpha Five applications. Their time and responses often save other developers, but it's not always timely, particularly for people having serious issues.

                                If it's in the budget, and I realize it often isn't, you can bring in outside consultants that can probably resolve your issues, or at least identify/target the bug, so it can be fixed by Alpha. The IADN has a list of consultants that you can look at here that might be able to help you.
                                Regards,

                                Ira J. Perlow
                                Computer Systems Design


                                CSDA A5 Products
                                New - Free CSDA DiagInfo - v1.39, 30 Apr 2013
                                CSDA Barcode Functions

                                CSDA Code Utility
                                CSDA Screen Capture


                                Comment

                                Working...
                                X