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Sudden Growth of .FPT

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    Sudden Growth of .FPT

    I have encountered an issue which puzzles me. I run a small application with about 1000 records. When I went to back it up I found that the tv.fpt file had suddenly grown to 200+Mb.

    I believe that the fpt is to do with the memo field. I have only made one entry since the last back-up. I have copied the earlier very small file and carried on.

    Is there a known problem? I was using the penultimate build 1385.

    Rev Peter Lear

    #2
    RE: Sudden Growth of .FPT

    Peter,

    I haven't heard of a specific problem of the sort you describe, lately. Folks run into it when the memo file becomes corrupted. You'll find several threads on this over in the Vers. 4 forum.

    Anyone using memo fields should be familiar with Dr. Wayne's recommendations. These fields require special care and handling, since the contents are stored in the separate FPT file. See, 'Memos and Browses That Work' at www.learn alpha.com.

    -- tom

    Comment


      #3
      RE: Sudden Growth of .FPT

      Peter this issue has been raised before and I had hoped that memo fields were less susceptible to this problem now. I think if you search the forums for "memo fields" you will find much discussion and also if you take a look on Peter Waynes website which I think is www.learn alpha.com you will find some very sound advice on the use of memo fields. If you search the forums you will also find some scripts that allow you to recover corrupted memo files. One thing we are trying now in version 5 is to have all memo fields on forms flagged as disabled (set in the properties tab for the field) and to have a button using one of the new action scripting options which comes under the heading of "fields" in the left hand pane and "inspect the contents of a memo field" in the right hand pane. This forces the user to open the memo field in its pop up window and more importantly to force it to be correctly saved before moving on.
      Hope this helps.
      Bob Whitaker
      Bob Whitaker

      Comment


        #4
        RE: Sudden Growth of .FPT

        Thanks - I shall have a look as suggested

        Regards

        Peter

        -- Pray for peace

        Comment


          #5
          RE: Sudden Growth of .FPT

          I don't seem to be able to solve the problem. Probably my fault - usually is (or so the wife says!).

          The .ftp file was so big I needed 2 CD roms to zip it to!

          The rest of the app is attached.

          If anyone knows what I am doing wrong I'd welcome your thoughts.

          Rev Peter Lear

          Comment


            #6
            RE: Sudden Growth of .FPT

            Peter,

            I'm sorry to hear you're still dogged by this.

            If you have not yet implemented Dr. Wayne's strategy, you should do so.

            If that's more than you can handle (it is for many), then you might consider abandoning memo fields altogether, settling for a single large character type field, instead. I think the max size is 255 chars or some such.

            It's also possible to build a child table that contains only two fields, a link field to the parent (primary) table of the set, and a 255 char type text field. A series of records could be added there each of which is limited to 255 chars. but all of which are linked to the primary table. This would give you the capability of seeing a series of notes, all of which are related to the current primary record. Depending on your application this may suffice, and will be more stable the using variable length memo fields that require special handling.

            -- tom

            Comment


              #7
              RE: Sudden Growth of .FPT

              I spent the morning trying to see if I do the Peter Wayne solution - but it is a bit much to a)wrap my elderly head round, and b) I think it would confuse the colleages who use the system.

              I save every memo entry separately, and if you recall, I adapted your entry system (many grateful thanks) which means that the form can only be closed if all data is 'committed'.

              I CAN use large character fields, of course. But surely the sophistication of A5v5 is such that this just should not happen.

              I have used the XBasic book, and written a button and script to save a text file with all the entries in there - and I have 'improved' it to date stamp each version.

              I then examined the tv.ftp 59Mb file with a dos file viewer. The entries I had put into the memo fields were there, but so were text fragments of various xbasic scripts mixed in, and also a lot of 'machine code' binary stuff which was not legible. So something is writing A5 operating instructions into the ftp file - and I reckon that the file grows because this 'leakage' keeps on happening.

              Rev Peter Lear

              Comment


                #8
                RE: Sudden Growth of .FPT

                Peter
                I tried to open your attached application but am not able to as it cannot find the memo file.

                Rick T

                Comment


                  #9
                  RE: Sudden Growth of .FPT

                  Peter,

                  While perseverance in the face of adversity is often a noble trait, I have found that my head often stops hurting once I stop pounding it against the same wall.

                  -- tom

                  Comment


                    #10
                    RE: Sudden Growth of .FPT

                    Peter,

                    For what it's worth, I used to have many problems with memo fields in Alpha Four dos. I found that whenever I add information to a memo it MUST be in change mode. Putting the record in change mode eliminated all problems that I had with memo's.

                    Mike
                    Thank you,
                    Mike Konoff

                    Comment


                      #11
                      RE: Sudden Growth of .FPT

                      Rats - as i said the file filled more than one CD when zipped up, so I sent it without the ftp file. I had assumed that the rest of the app could work without it. Blast - and other unchurchmanlike expressions. Now what do I do?

                      I could forward an earlier copy before the problem arose, but that would not help, I guess.

                      Perhaps I should send the whole thing to Selwyn in the mail.

                      Peter

                      Comment


                        #12
                        RE: Sudden Growth of .FPT

                        I too have this problem of the inflating FPT file. Sometimes when I do a database compact the FPT file swells to over 1 GB and another file .$$M appears and is over 1 GB as well.
                        Still looking for what is causing the problem before I can work out a solution.

                        Comment


                          #13
                          RE: Sudden Growth of .FPT

                          Just a note. This has happened to me too. It rendered my memo fields useless.

                          Comment


                            #14
                            RE: Sudden Growth of .FPT

                            usually when this happens you have one or two corrupted records in your memo file. you can recover virtually the entire file, with the exception of the corrupted records, by:

                            1) duplicating the structure of the table in another, empty table
                            2) appending records, some at a time, from the old table to the new table until you discover which record is corrupted. e.g. if you have 1000 records total, try copying the first 500. if that works successfully, you know the error is in the second 500 records. then copy records from 500-750. if that fails, you know the corruption is in that range. you can keep narrowing it down--as long as you cut the table in half each time, it shouldn't take very long to find the bad record (no more than 10 tries with 1000 records, since 2**10=1024).
                            3) once you have discovered which memo is corrupted, append every record except that one to a fresh table.

                            Comment

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