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The Alpha Software Forum Participation Guidelines

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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.

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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.

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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.
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auto-increment and multi-user

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    auto-increment and multi-user

    Hi All,

    Since I am a complete newbie re A5 please forgive if I do ask stupid things in the near future ;-) I am not new to databases though, having worked with dBase and DataEase since the eighties - and yes, I've toyed with M$ Abscess and no - it doesn't come close to A5 for a thousand miles.

    OK, to business:
    What is the current wisdom in the A5 world on incremental numbering of records over a networked app? Is it safe to use A5's built in auto-increment as a field rule on a multi user application re gaps or dupes in numbers?

    Or is it more prudent to keep a separate table for that and place appropriate locks on it during a save? (Can I lock a table for just an operation through code by myself?)

    What are you gals and guys doing in this respect?

    Thanks a lot for your input!

    Charles from Switzerland
    SwissCharles
    Between the Alps and a comfy place

    #2
    RE: auto-increment and multi-user

    It depends. If you are auto-incrementing a field in a table that is not being used in a set, there should be no problem at all using the built-in auto-increment. If it is the parent in a 1:1 set, I quite honestly don't know for sure but I think I would go with a separate table. If it is the parent in a 1:Many set, I would definitely go with a separate table.

    The built-in auto-increment works but I have had some customers experience problems with the links getting mixed up when two people happen to be creating new records at the same time. It can also be confusing because both users will get the same new 'number' (typically it should not actually be numeric) until the records are saved.

    I should add a disclaimer here. These things happened in version 4 and, since A5 still uses .dbf files, I'm assuming it to be the same in v5 but I haven't tested it.

    For the solution, go to the newsletter at www.imakenews.com/alphasoftware/. There have been a number of articles on this topic. To see the other articles, go to the Archive area in the right margin of the newsletter.

    Comment


      #3
      RE: auto-increment and multi-user

      My insider info tells me that the next newsletter will be released sometime today so you may need to use the archive just to find the latest article which is in issue 13.

      Comment


        #4
        RE: auto-increment and multi-user

        Cal,

        Many thanks for guiding me to the newsletters! The wealth of information available on this site truly amazes me :-)

        I'll go for the separate tables route then.

        Charles
        SwissCharles
        Between the Alps and a comfy place

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