Mapped Table limits

[netgeorger]

I keep getting the error message "maximum open session tables exceeded" when I go to open a mapped table.
I have mapped 57 tables into a mapped table. I thought that since it was a virtual table it would be different from a set which is limited to 40 tables. The help files state that the maximum open tables is 100. What then is the actual number of tables supported by a Mapped table?
Do I have some kind of error in the virtual mapped table definition?
Is a mapped table no better than a set with respect to how many tables can be in it? I think this is a bug but I don�t know because I can�t find any information on the limits of mapped tables. Can anyone clarify this? I have seen on other posts that people are running into this same error message but without answers as to why.
Thanks for any insight!

[Al Buchholz]

Re: Mapped Table limits

No matter what the limits are.... that's a lot of tables to tie together...

I'm guessing there is a better way to accomplish what you want..

[netgeorger]

Re: Mapped Table limits

No matter what the limits are.... that's a lot of tables to tie together...

I'm guessing there is a better way to accomplish what you want..

Thanks for the advice, another way, or a better way is evident since the mapped table won�t work, well I am trying to make a merge to Word perfect which would use the names of the fields of the different tables. To make a generic merge I need some kind of flat file I think , that is why I thought to use a mapped table. I could write the table to a comma delimited text file I don�t know if alpha has a method to do that but as far as I know a comma delimited text file is as good a data source as any for a merge in Wordperfect. I would need to dump the tables with their field names into a file one after the other until I have added together all of the relevant tables. This might be more efficient as I could filter out tables that were not used .
I have thought about constructing a flat table on the fly building names on the bases of the counts of records in the other tables such as Child1 Child2 child3 or Benificiary1 Benificiary2 going out to as many as there can be always an unknown amount. This would give me a more efficient flat file but a table devoted to each client which at the moment is running around 1300. I suppose there is no limit to the amount of tables you can have.
I have also thought of joins upon joins but I don�t know how to update them to another client they seem to be a fairly static result for a onetime event as far as I can tell.

[Tom Cone Jr]

Re: Mapped Table limits

But the question implicit in Al's response remains. Why so many doggone tables?

[Finian Lennon]

Re: Mapped Table limits

George:

The method you outline (export to flat file, then to text file) will definitely work. I designed a method using that approach in A5 V4 and, with later modifications and updates, it's still working. Here's a link to an article I wrote back in 1999 (ouch!) that is still available at LearnAlpha.com.

http://www.learn alpha.com/Integrate...grateWWord.htm

It describes the xbasic approach in detail. We merge with MS Word, but there's no reason why it won't work with WP, in fact it may be easier in some ways.

A couple of points: (1) our output file has 99 fields. I'm not sure what sort of performance hit you might see with 400. (2) Assuming you have multiple users who will be merging simultaneously, you need to accommodate that into the design. (3) Assuming you have one to many relationships among some of the tables, you will need to find a way to accommodate those. I describe our approach in the article.

Finally, the later versions of A5 have much more robust methods for writing data directly from Alpha into external files. I've since designed a much more flexible system using those methods. You should at least consider that approach.

[netgeorger]

Re: Mapped Table limits

Finian Lennon
Thanks for responding
I have looked at this example many times over the years as it is the only example there is that even approaches the problem. It seemed to daunting at first and unintelligible to a beginner and I am only now able to follow what is going on in the script
you talk about more robust methods. What might they be and is there a simple single example of how to move a field into another field in another app such as word perfect.
thanks so much.

[Finian Lennon]

Re: Mapped Table limits

I should have used a different word. Saying "more robust" implies weakness in the original method. That method has performed well with many users for many years, so I'll change "more robust" to "more direct".

The main difference with later approaches is that in the original method the construction of the merge documents was all done separately in Word and the actual merge was triggered by Word macros rather than Alpha itself.

Using Alpha's OLE methods you can now use xbasic (this is for Word, I'm assuming, but don't know for sure, that WP can manipulated in a similar fashion) to do something like :

olestring = "Word.application"
WrdApp = ole.GetObject("",Olestring)
if alltrim(WrdDcNew) <> "" then
opendocname = Checkslash(alltrim(Dpath4)) + alltrim(WrdDcNew)
wrddoc = WrdApp.Documents.Open(opendocname)

and later

WrdMailMerge = WrdDoc.MailMerge()

to begin constructing the merge itself.

I don't know how much, if any, of this can be done with action scripting. I rely on xbasic.

No matter how you look at it, constructing an interface for others to do mail merges requires a good deal of time and effort. There are just so many user options to be considered.

FWIW, I still use an updated version of my original approach. I write the application data into a flat file and then into a text file which is the merge data source. Now, however, I can use Alpha to insert merge fields into the Word doc, run the merge and run any of the existing Word formatting macros, where appropriate.