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Active link table questions

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    Active link table questions

    1) Are the active link tables created on the local workstation, or in the database folder on the server? If you're running Alpha Five on a standalone machine I think it makes no difference. But if you're running network optimized from a shadow folder on a local workstation, I'm curious. Where does the "active link table" actually exist?


    2) I see ODBC as an option that possibly could be used to create an active-link table. Might this be a way to create an active-link table from an existing native Alpha Five table? Would there be situations where this might be advisable, or would this most likely be a bad idea in almost all cases?

    Thanks.

    -- tom

    ps. I apologize if these have been covered in earlier threads. The forum's search capability seems to have been turned off.

    #2
    Re: Active link table questions

    Originally posted by Tom Cone Jr View Post
    1) Are the active link tables created on the local workstation, or in the database folder on the server? If you're running Alpha Five on a standalone machine I think it makes no difference. But if you're running network optimized from a shadow folder on a local workstation, I'm curious. Where does the "active link table" actually exist?


    2) I see ODBC as an option that possibly could be used to create an active-link table. Might this be a way to create an active-link table from an existing native Alpha Five table? Would there be situations where this might be advisable, or would this most likely be a bad idea in almost all cases?

    .
    active-link tables are created wherever you tell a5 to create them. it is up to you.

    in a traditional dbf application, the master database on the fileserver has all of the local tables in it and then when a user on a work station uses network optimization to create a local shadow of the master database, local 'shadow' tables are created on the work station that point to the real table on the file server.

    active-links are the same. the developer will create active-link tables in the master database on the server, and then when the network optimized database is created on each user's workstation, a5 will just copy the active-link table from the master to the shadow on the user's work station.

    on the second question:
    i can't see any advantage in accessing local a5 tables as active-link tables rather than native tables. i have never tried it. in theory it might work using the Visual Fox Pro odbc driver. But if you did, you would loose long field names, all field rules and any extensions that a5 makes to the .dbf format.

    Comment


      #3
      Re: Active link table questions

      Selwyn, thanks. That helps me understand things a bit better.

      Since the client workstations in a network optimized setting will be sharing the active link table created by the developer on the server, if one of the workstations refreshes the active link data it should be visible to the other workstations, too, right?

      Comment


        #4
        Re: Active link table questions

        Originally posted by Tom Cone Jr View Post
        Selwyn, thanks. That helps me understand things a bit better.

        Since the client workstations in a network optimized setting will be sharing the active link table created by the developer on the server, if one of the workstations refreshes the active link data it should be visible to the other workstations, too, right?
        no.

        each user who opens the active link table gets to see a 'live' snapshot of the server data.

        i say 'live' snapshot becase before editing any field in the table, that row is automatically refreshed.

        but if two different users are looking at an active-link table that is based on say a customer table and both are looking at the record for customerid = 'abcd' which happens to have a customername of 'alpha software'.

        if some other user (using some totally different product for example, or using a5 - does not matter) updates the record on ther server and changes the company name to 'gamma software', ***neither*** of the a5 users who have open active-link tables will see the change until:

        1. user 1 presses the F5 key - that will refresh the CURRENT row in the open active-link, or
        2. user 1 presses Shift+F5 - refresh all rows in the currently open active-link table, or
        3. start editing a field in that row of the active-link table - which automatically does a refresh of that row.

        However, none of the above 3 actions has ANY effect on user 2's view of the data. His already open active-link table will not reflect any changes make by other users until one of the above 3 things happes in HIS open active link table.

        Comment


          #5
          Re: Active link table questions

          From the sounds of this discussion and the discussion brought forward by Anis Fakhoury it sounds like if you are gonna have multiple individuals working in the same active link table you will need to perform a table refresh periodically throughout the day. Otherwise you may be working on old records and not seeing the most recent records.

          Not being in a position to test it, what is the performance hit like for performing a refresh of the active link tables? Of course it will depend upon table size and network conditions, but in an ideal situation is a refresh of an active link table something that can occur while the user is working? Or does the user need to stop work and wait for the refresh to complete?

          My only experience in this area is in regards to how QReportBuilder grabs its data from the QuickBooks database. Depending on size of the database the import process may need to run several hours.
          Andrew

          Comment


            #6
            Re: Active link table questions

            Originally posted by aschone View Post
            From the sounds of this discussion and the discussion brought forward by Anis Fakhoury it sounds like if you are gonna have multiple individuals working in the same active link table you will need to perform a table refresh periodically throughout the day. Otherwise you may be working on old records and not seeing the most recent records..
            I was under the impression that when you open a record, you always get the up to date version... that SEEMS to be the case with my test browses at any rate...

            Comment


              #7
              Re: Active link table questions

              Originally posted by NoeticCC View Post
              I was under the impression that when you open a record, you always get the up to date version... that SEEMS to be the case with my test browses at any rate...

              not sure what 'open a record' means.

              if you mean 'open a table' then yes, you get up to date data.

              once the active-link table cache is populated, however, a record in the cache is only refreshed when a refresh command on that record is executed, or when the record is edited (which causes an automatic refresh).

              this should not be construed as a 'limitation' however. its how all products work. it is how the enterprise manager for sql server works. it is how access works, etc.

              Comment


                #8
                Re: Active link table questions

                Originally posted by Selwyn Rabins View Post
                not sure what 'open a record' means.

                if you mean 'open a table' then yes, you get up to date data.
                Yes that is what I mean, e.g. you open a browse or a form that pulls data from the active link table... and thus open a record/row in that table.

                I get the impression some posters in this thread seem to think the whole table is only refreshed when you open an application/database and then not again until you close and re-open it :)

                Comment


                  #9
                  Re: Active link table questions

                  Am I right, then, in my thinking that to take advantage of optimistic record locking a developer would have to use a non .dbf table format such as MySQL?

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Re: Active link table questions

                    Originally posted by Bob Arbuthnot View Post
                    Am I right, then, in my thinking that to take advantage of optimistic record locking a developer would have to use a non .dbf table format such as MySQL?
                    yes. native tables use pessimistic locking and active-link tables use optimistic record locking.

                    however, it should be noted that an active link table can be configured (if you want) to not use optimistic record locking. if you edit the active-link definition, and you change the UPDATE statement's WHERE clause from

                    'primary key and updateable fields'

                    to

                    'primary key only'


                    then you have effectively turned off optimistic record locking for that particular active link table.

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Re: Active link table questions

                      Just a suggestion: Some of the questions and answers here would make a very good FAQ for active link tables in the new help file (and maybe reduce the number of future forum entries!).

                      Ray

                      Comment


                        #12
                        Re: Active link table questions

                        Originally posted by aschone View Post
                        My only experience in this area is in regards to how QReportBuilder grabs its data from the QuickBooks database. Depending on size of the database the import process may need to run several hours.
                        you can't compare quickbooks and a real sql database.
                        a real sql database is hundreds, if not thousands of time faster than quickbooks.

                        so, opening an active-link table on a sql database table will be substantially faster than anything done against quickbooks.

                        Comment


                          #13
                          Re: Active link table questions

                          Originally posted by Selwyn Rabins View Post
                          once the active-link table cache is populated, however, a record in the cache is only refreshed when a refresh command on that record is executed, or when the record is edited (which causes an automatic refresh).

                          this should not be construed as a 'limitation' however. its how all products work. it is how the enterprise manager for sql server works. it is how access works, etc.
                          I guess that is why I never found "find by key" in Access! ;) Those of us without much SQL experience need to get right with proper techniques for accessing data in active link tables. I look forward to more discussions like this, with best practice techniques. (OK, OK, I could take a SQL class.)

                          Bill.

                          Comment


                            #14
                            Re: Active link table questions

                            Originally posted by Bill Parker View Post
                            I guess that is why I never found "find by key" in Access! ;) Those of us without much SQL experience need to get right with proper techniques for accessing data in active link tables. I look forward to more discussions like this, with best practice techniques. (OK, OK, I could take a SQL class.)
                            I bought Mysql for Beginners off of Amazon for 49 cents ( 3.99 shipping).
                            Tommy Thompson
                            Thompson Consulting Services
                            Beautiful Kentucky Lake, Springville, TN 38256
                            [email protected]

                            Comment


                              #15
                              Re: Active link table questions

                              I suggest that now that active-link tables are in the play it would be very helpful to open a new discusion board exclusively for SQL->Alpha related questions.
                              Cheers
                              Mauricio

                              Comment

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