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

jerry brightbill's article in the news letter

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

    jerry brightbill's article in the news letter

    I found Jerry Brightbill's article in the recent A5 news letter interesting and informative, and I believe that it may explain why I have had trouble accessing data in columns with long names using the foxPro odbc driver. The problem may well be that the columns that I am trying to access actually have a different name than what appears in the "Edit Structure" interface. Jerry explains that dbf-type tables can not support column names greater than 10 (or was it 8) characters, and that a translation list exists for long names in the table's data dictionary. This translation table could be a great resource for those of us trying to access A5 using an odbc driver. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find this trnaslation table.

    I was able to look at the data dictionary for the table I was interested in by copying the table.ddd and table.ddm to a temp directory and changing their file extensions to .dbf and .fpt respectively. Using A5, the new table.dbf opened up, and I looked in the memo fields (where the article says the translation table for long names should reside), but I was not able to find it. Anyone have any suggestions? Thanks,

    -Bill
    Tags: None
    #2
    RE: jerry brightbill's article in the news letter

    Bill

    The dbf limit is 10 characters. The "translation table" is actually a list in the ddm file which you probably can see with a generic file viewer. Actually, your method will show the entry if you also convert the ddx to cdx. This links the memo to the table.

    The best solution is stick to 10 characters or less always. Creates many fewer problems.

    Jerry

    Comment

      #3
      RE: jerry brightbill's article in the news letter

      Thanks for your response Jerry. I agree that sticking to 10 characters or less is a great idea - making all the changes (references to column names) would be difficult at this point.

      I will try renaming the .ddx to .cdx and see if this helps. I was able to view some of the memo field data by simply re-naming the first two files, but maybe I'm missing something. If I can't get to the LONG_NAME_OF_COLUMN = LONG_NAM1 list this way, you believe that the .ddm file can be opened in a text editor like note pad? Or did I missunderstand. Thanks,

      -Bill

      Comment

        #4
        RE: jerry brightbill's article in the news letter

        Jerry:

        I tried renaming the .ddx to .cdx but got the same results as before. (In my previous attempt, A5 had simply created a similar .cdx file when I opened my newly created (re-named) table. What sort of file viewer did you use to view the translation info for long names and are you sure it was in the .ddm file? Thanks for any help.

        -Bill

        Comment

          #5
          RE: jerry brightbill's article in the news letter

          Jerry:

          I tried opening the .ddm file with word pad and note pad but the many special characters in the file make it diffiicult to interperet. Is there a file viewer you recommend? Thanks in advance.

          -Bill

          Comment

            #6
            RE: jerry brightbill's article in the news letter

            First backup, backup, backup. Opening the data dictionary is NOT AN OPERATION FOR A NOVICE as you can do considerable damage to your existing tables if you make ANY errors.

            Now, if you want to go into the data dictionary and pull out information, I would strongly suggest making a copy of the originals and moving the copies temporarily to a different directory. Then change both the name and extension of the files. Otherwise, you WILL overwrite the existing dbf and cdx files with unpleasant results. For example, if you want to look at the info for the customers table, rename customers.ddd to customers1.dbf, rename the ddm to the same name with a fpt extension, and the ddx with a cdx extension. Now add the dbf to a database and open normally. If you open the table in default browse, check out the contents_m field. That is where you will find the list if there is one. Whatever you do, do NOT modify the original files.

            Jerry

            Comment

              #7
              RE: jerry brightbill's article in the news letter

              Jerry:

              Thanks for the above, and let me assure you: you are preaching to the choir. I only fool around with copies located in their own directories. In this case, I followed the steps you outline above and found a table with 5 columns. They were called: Name C:24, Type C:4, Contents_C C:64, Contents_M M:10, and Vendor M:10. The table whose data dictionary this was created from contains several columns with titles that are greater than 10 characters. The new table (created from the data dictionary) had 10 records. In rec_no() 1's contents_M (memo) field there was a list of the 12 column titles (separated by semi colons) that exist in the original table, but no equivalent short titles. The list appears (copied and pasted) as follows:

              PHOTOG_ID;PHOTOG_STAFF;PHOTOG_NAME;JOB;TRANSACTION_TYPE;CHARGES;PERCENT;ENTITY_ID;TRNS_NU;EXCEPTION;PICTURE;PIC_ID;

              In the third record of the data dictionary table's contents_m field the following appears:

              Job=Job;Trans=Trans;

              But there is no reference to an alternative, internally used name for the column "TRANSACTION_TYPE," for example. Is this list stored somewhere else? Or am I misunderstanding something? It would be extreemly helpful to find that list, as it would make accessing A5 data much easier with the FoxPro odbc driver.

              Thanks for any help.

              _Bill

              Comment

              Previous template Next
              Working...
              X