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
Devcon 2020 Goes Virtual! LEARN MORE >

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

compact and pack

Collapse
X
Collapse
 
  • Page of 1
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts
Previous template Next
    #1

    compact and pack

    I have built a new app for my business and it is running fine, except that it is getting a little slower as more data is entered. Can someone explain the "database compact" command under file, and the "pack" command? Will these help to keep the databases running smooth and if so, how often should they be run. There is little or no information in the help files on these two commands.
    Tags: None
    #2
    RE: compact and pack

    'Pack' physically removes records marked for deletion, and rebuilds the table's indexes. It does not touch the dictionary files for the table.

    'Database Compact' does the same thing for the data tables, and also for the related dictionary files. The dictionary files are where your layouts, field rules, etc. are stored. During design of your application, as you make changes each iteration is stored in the dictionaries. Compacting clears out the old, superseded iterations.

    -- tom

    Comment

      #3
      RE: compact and pack

      Tom,
      Thanks for your reply.

      I ran the database compact and saw a tremendous change in the size of the files. I am unclear on one point: does database compact also pack the files making pack redundant after database compact has been performed? How often should I compact and can there be problems with doing it too often?

      If pack is also required, I have questions on the use of pack:

      You said that packing updates the indexes, so I do not have to run both pack and update indexes? With the pack command, how often should this be run? Can it be automated to pack all of the tables? Would packing Sets save time over packing tables?


      Thanks

      Gordon Stern

      Comment

        #4
        RE: compact and pack

        Gordon

        Compacting the database clears out the data dictionaries, packs the tables and updates the indexes. Packing clears deleted records from the tables and updates the indexes. Updating indexes just rebuids all of the index keys. Since a set contains no data and is actually only a data dictionary, pack has not relevance to sets. If you try to pack a set, you will just pack the individual tables. Same for updating indexes for a set, it really doesn't do any more that updaing the indexes for each link table.

        Compacting really only needs to be done if you have made any design changes and then it should be done nearly every time. Packing only needs to be done if you have deleted any records. Updating the indexes really only needs done if there is an index problem. Having said that, most developers include maintenance options to pack and update indexes periodically.

        Jerry

        Comment

          #5
          RE: compact and pack

          What should I do after I modified some forms and run a compact. I run a network environment that is network optimized.

          Comment

            #6
            RE: compact and pack

            Greg,

            Refreshing the shadow database works for some.

            If it were me, I'd network optimize each workstation all over again. This may be overkill, however. If you know which dictionaries were updated, you might be able to just copy them to the shadow folders on each workstation. I've never tried this, personally.

            -- tom

            Comment

            Previous template Next
            Working...
            X