I've been studying Alpha Five's File Types in as much depth as the documentation permits. I need your advice on an extremely important issue.
I've got all the production files on my development computer. As I make changes to the application I'll need to overlay all changes onto the production system. Obviously I have to be extremely careful to not overlay any files that contain the data because I'll regress the live data.
My understanding is that no matter what I change (layouts, field rules, sets, scripts et cetera) I'll be totally safe if I overlay the production system with ALL my development files EXCEPT the table .DBFs and .FPTs. It's my conclusion that EVERYTHING that I could be working on as a developer are in other files except the DBF and FPT files.
I believe there is one and ONLY ONE exception to this. That would be if I make a change to the table structure (not field rules or anything else but the structure itself). IN THAT CASE, I'll need to make my changes directly to the production DBFs. My understanding is that the ONLY content of the DBF is the raw data and the definition of that data. Expressed a different way, if I need to change a field from logical to character, or character to date, or change the size or number of decimals, or finally the name of the field, THEN AND ONLY THEN must I make the change directly to the production files.
I'm sure you'll agree that this is possibly the most important single thing a developer needs to understand about Alpha Five.
AM I CORRECT? HAVE I MISSED ANYTHING?
Thanks for any answers to this important post. ---- Sam
I've got all the production files on my development computer. As I make changes to the application I'll need to overlay all changes onto the production system. Obviously I have to be extremely careful to not overlay any files that contain the data because I'll regress the live data.
My understanding is that no matter what I change (layouts, field rules, sets, scripts et cetera) I'll be totally safe if I overlay the production system with ALL my development files EXCEPT the table .DBFs and .FPTs. It's my conclusion that EVERYTHING that I could be working on as a developer are in other files except the DBF and FPT files.
I believe there is one and ONLY ONE exception to this. That would be if I make a change to the table structure (not field rules or anything else but the structure itself). IN THAT CASE, I'll need to make my changes directly to the production DBFs. My understanding is that the ONLY content of the DBF is the raw data and the definition of that data. Expressed a different way, if I need to change a field from logical to character, or character to date, or change the size or number of decimals, or finally the name of the field, THEN AND ONLY THEN must I make the change directly to the production files.
I'm sure you'll agree that this is possibly the most important single thing a developer needs to understand about Alpha Five.
AM I CORRECT? HAVE I MISSED ANYTHING?
Thanks for any answers to this important post. ---- Sam
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