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    unstable

    my users and I are getting so frustrated, my app is so unstable and depsite lots of work its still not as fast at the old access app we used.

    most of the instability seems to be since i upgraded to v9, having read the posts, i am sure it is something i am doing, but these probelms were not present in v8.

    some issues
    • unhandled error, forced termination.
    • no records in query on some browses (only happens randomly)
    • slow to open forms (even forms based upon just one table, with no load/activate events)
    • fields wont allow typing or user actions, (need to close and reopen form)
    • hangs in certain places


    i have used variables more, is this maybe the cause. does a variable need to be removed after it has been used? could variables be causing the unhandled exceptions? any other ideas.

    we are at the point where this app is costing productivity time and the users want to revert to the access app.

    i posted a sample recently here http://msgboard.alphasoftware.com/al...ad.php?t=75966

    if anyone has the time to have a look

    thanks

    richard

    #2
    Re: unstable

    Cool! Somebody else is finally reporting all the problems I've been seeing. It makes me wonder if there is something we are doing in our apps that others aren't. (I'm also betting your app runs with maximized forms??)

    I've been having the same issues with one of my apps. And worse yet, it's a generic one that is used by about 8 customers which should give you some idea of the significance of these problems to me. In fact, I pulled it back from all but one customer who is trying to help me resolve the problems. The app was upgraded from v7 to v9 and I am about to go back to the v7 app and try upgrading it just to v8 to see if that will help. (I need to use an email function that I was never able to get working properly in v7.) Unfortunately I'll have to give up some of the new features if I do that but I'd rather have an app that works than one that doesn't work but has "neat new features".

    Taking your issues one by one, here's what I've found so far:

    unhandled error, forced termination. Sorry, I have no idea how to fix this one yet. I've been working with Alpha on it but only found one reproducible crash - unfortunately it may not even be related to the ones my customer is seeing - and when I sent it to Alpha they couldn't reproduce it. However, they think they know what was causing it and hopefully it will be fixed in the next release. If you can reliable reproduce this, by all means send a bug report to Alpha!
    no records in query on some browses (only happens randomly) I seldom run queries in this particular app so I haven't heard of any issues with this. This is the only issue you've mentioned that I haven't seen.
    slow to open forms (even forms based upon just one table, with no load/activate events) Try setting the anti-virus program to ignore the folder your data is in. That seemed to solve it for me. My customer was also seeing very sloooooow typing speeds - she could type a whole street address then look up to verify it and nothing would be there. When it did appear, it all showed up at once. If you aren't seeing the same thing, it may not be an anti-virus issue.
    fields wont allow typing or user actions, (need to close and reopen form) My customer has "been there done that" on a daily basis. No real fix yet. (See below)
    hangs in certain places My customer has "been there done that" on a daily basis. No real fix yet. (Not sure yet if this is fixed as noted below.)

    I have been able to fix the last two(?) items. We just realized how to do it yesterday. Unfortunately, it's not a very viable fix. Every time this happens to my customer and she calls me, I log in with LogMeIn to see what's happening and the problem goes away immediately. I know it's weird but it happens every time. We just realized this last night and I haven't even informed Alpha yet - don't know what they will do with that info but at least it will be another piece of the puzzle. I've also asked my customer to disable LogMeIn to see if that helps. If it doesn't, I'll go in and remove it from her startup routines so it never even loads and see if that fixes anything. (Hopefully I can also create an icon to let her load it manually when she wants me to log in.)

    I changed my app from "maximize all forms at startup" and it's now running as a MDI app but (a) it seems to have made thing better but only slightly and (b) my customer hates it because she is constantly clicking the wrong window and it slows her down - she wants the maximized windows back but she also wants it to work. (some people are so picky!)

    I'm sure Alpha will fix this if we can find a way to reliably reproduce the problem(s).
    Last edited by CALocklin; 10-23-2008, 11:10 AM.

    Comment


      #3
      Re: unstable

      Hi Richard,

      Originally posted by richard2007 View Post
      my users and I are getting so frustrated, my app is so unstable and depsite lots of work its still not as fast at the old access app we used.

      most of the instability seems to be since i upgraded to v9, having read the posts, i am sure it is something i am doing, but these probelms were not present in v8.
      1st solution is to move back to version 8, until version 9 issues can be resolved. Hopefully you can do this.

      Originally posted by richard2007 View Post
      some issues
      • unhandled error, forced termination.
      I can't tell you why it's happening, but it's almost likely some aspect of your code, as opposed to some Alpha internals such as forms. Cal's code is very clean, but that doesn't mean you are having the same problems, just the same symptoms. I have been able to stabilize many apps by changing which functions were being used. All were very repeatable failures.

      Originally posted by richard2007 View Post
      i have used variables more, is this maybe the cause. does a variable need to be removed after it has been used? could variables be causing the unhandled exceptions? any other ideas.
      Unless, you are using large variables character or blobs (64 megs +), you don't really gain anything by deleting variables (which actually can be a slow operation). The number and size of typical variables has no effect on the stability. I have seen some issues having bad characters (read as non-ASCII characters) in character fields etc, and have had issues with ListView objects in XDialogs.

      Unfortunately, it's very difficult to ascertain failures without having a similar setup. 1st thing to isolate is whether the failures can occur on a stand-alone system. Then isolate the sections, tables, field rules etc that might be the source.
      Regards,

      Ira J. Perlow
      Computer Systems Design


      CSDA A5 Products
      New - Free CSDA DiagInfo - v1.39, 30 Apr 2013
      CSDA Barcode Functions

      CSDA Code Utility
      CSDA Screen Capture


      Comment


        #4
        Re: unstable

        Cal, your post makes me wonder if online backup "services" that run in the background, monitoring disk activity, might also be (or become) a problem ? I've been experimenting with Carbonite, but there are others. They load on startup and monitor changes to the hard disk so that that backups can be made over the internet. Wonder if your customer, or Richard's, is using something similar? -- tom

        Comment


          #5
          Re: unstable

          Originally posted by csda1 View Post
          Unless, you are using large variables character or blobs (64 megs +), you don't really gain anything by deleting variables (which actually can be a slow operation). The number and size of typical variables has no effect on the stability. I have seen some issues having bad characters (read as non-ASCII characters) in character fields etc, and have had issues with ListView objects in XDialogs.
          FWIW: I have seen one application that used many, many, many, many, global variables (well over 1000 - I think it was something like 1700) and this definitely slowed down the application but I don't recall seeing any other adverse affects.

          RE: Tom's question about Carbonite.
          I'll check into it and let you know. I don't think she's using it now but maybe in the past.

          Comment


            #6
            Re: unstable

            Hi Cal,

            Originally posted by CALocklin View Post
            FWIW: I have seen one application that used many, many, many, many, global variables (well over 1000 - I think it was something like 1700) and this definitely slowed down the application but I don't recall seeing any other adverse affects
            Well, you know how you and I feel about the unnecessary use of global variables.

            I suspect that what happens is that when Alpha is looking for a variable that is not dimensioned in code, it pops up to the shared and global levels of variables and searches for the existence of a variable. This would probably increase the overhead of accessing this variable.

            With few global variables, and only occasional use of shared variables, and all variables explicitly dimensioned, I have not seen any slow downs ever in my code.

            This is another potentially good reason to explicitly dimension variables!

            One thing that does slow things down is passing large character or blobs to or from a function. If doing this, it is better to create it and then pass pointers around.
            Regards,

            Ira J. Perlow
            Computer Systems Design


            CSDA A5 Products
            New - Free CSDA DiagInfo - v1.39, 30 Apr 2013
            CSDA Barcode Functions

            CSDA Code Utility
            CSDA Screen Capture


            Comment


              #7
              Re: unstable

              hi everyone,

              thanks for all the input.

              a few points-

              we use e-trust by computer associates for our anti virus, deployed at server level. this has been configured to ignore the folder and did make a big difference (was much much much slower before we did this)

              we do use a contsant back up system 'idrive' this could be the cause and will check that out tomorrow.

              all of my forms are maximised but this is usually taken care of in the on acivate event.

              re my hanging (and it will be my hanging if i dont get this sorted as im sure there will be a lynch mob after me) in the link(post below), the error can be reproduced with the sample.


              i think maybe the variables are causing the issue with forced termination, i will try at dimensioning the variables. maybe someone has a better idea at what i am using the variables for, which is

              need to progmatically add a child record in a set, i need to pass values from either the parent table or even the same child table to the new records. this is used mainly when adding tasks (similiar to outlook tasks). the fields are such as lender, adviser, client etc, these values stay the same for each client and a client could be assigned to any adviser and could have a mortgage with any lender.

              i am hapy to move back to v8, but only have a 3 user licence and have just bought 10 user run engine, so dont really want to buy 10 user licence for v8. (unless alpha want to help me out until all issues resolved)

              in terms of speed, i also use this app daily and i use a full development verison of alpha and i link directly to the data on the server. all of the other users, use a shadowed database and a run engine licence. my speed is consideribly faster than the others (still not as fast as access though), server is server 2003, 3gh processor and 2mb ram. each pc is xp pro with at least 1mb ram. should there really be that much difference.

              thanks for all the input anyway, i was thining that i had taken on more than i could handle, but then alpha is for beginners.

              thanks

              richard

              Comment


                #8
                Re: unstable

                we do use a contsant back up system 'idrive' this could be the cause and will check that out tomorrow.
                We were using iDrive with Continuous Backup enabled but I quickly disabled the Continuous Backup feature when I discovered that it was causing issues with our Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software which is written in Visual FoxPro 9. It seems that while iDrive would backup files (even open files) this caused issues with the database; iDrive didn't have a problem with it but the CRM software did. I cannot say whether the same would be true for an AlphaFive program although it seems likely that it would under certain circumstances.

                We do still use iDrive but I allow it to only do backups at night. Unfortunately, Continuous Backup is an all-or-nothing proposition so it is not possible to disable this feature for specific file types, files, folders, etc. I did report this to iDrive so this may be addressed at some point in the future.

                Comment


                  #9
                  Re: unstable

                  I recently updated my Quickbooks to 2008 and it included Google desktop - which causes all sorts of these kind of problems. Once I uninstalled it things were much better. Also removing Ad-aware 2007 which runs as a service seemed to help. I also have added Corian 9 for backups and haven't seen any problems from it yet. But my backups are scheduled to run when I am not there.
                  Robin

                  Discernment is not needed in things that differ, but in those things that appear to be the same. - Miles Sanford

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Re: unstable

                    i have seen ad aware on a few of the pc's and google toolbars. ill work with these tomorrow and stop the idrive continious back ups.

                    thanks

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Re: unstable

                      This may (or may not be) slightly off topic but I am seeing bizarre behavior when using Alpha V9 and Vista 64 Bit.

                      Plus, given the fact that there is a problem with the Alpha Provided Amyuni Driver working in Vista 64Bit it really hinders it's usage. Almost any sort of printing in Alpha (other than to a printer) will seemingly fail in Vista 64 Bit. I reported this as a bug awhile back and was informed by Alpha they would need to check on this with Amyuni but they did confirm no 64 bit support for the PDF driver at that time. Trying to print to a PDF in Vista 64 bit will fail everytime and lock Alpha up straight away with a forced closure of the program.

                      I mention the above on the off chance you are using Vista 64 bit. The pdf issue is not the only one I have seen which is really the reason I posted this - I have seen some other weird issues - most were related to screen refreshes though it seems.

                      Please see the attached...

                      Regards,

                      Jeff

                      Comment


                        #12
                        Re: unstable

                        Originally posted by richard2007 View Post
                        i have seen ad aware on a few of the pc's and google toolbars. ill work with these tomorrow and stop the idrive continious back ups.

                        thanks
                        "Google Toolbar" and "Google Desktop" are two independent applications, just wanted to clarify before people get confused.
                        Andrew

                        Comment


                          #13
                          Re: unstable

                          Yes, I agree I have found that Alpha Five v9 Platinum seems much more unstable, I have to do frequent restarts now that were never necessary with v8 the other software on my PC has not changed since I swapped to V9. I also have a problem with screen corruption, see my post:

                          http://msgboard.alphasoftware.com/al...ad.php?t=75913

                          I reported this as a bug, but I still haven't had a response from Alpha. I have had various other problems on v9 that I have reported as bugs and they are still problems to this day.

                          I purchased this upgrade with a special offer for some free training - which I still haven't received - I sent an e-mail to Alpha to ask them how to claim this training but I had no reply to this either. I feel my problems and questions are being ignored; does anyone else?

                          I just live in hope that the next patch rectifies some of the issues I have reported.

                          The company I work for wanted me to put my application on their network, because they were impressed by what Alpha can do and were thinking about purchasing 5 Alpha V9 runtime licenses, but I cannot justify buying any further licenses until some of the issues I have reported are solved!
                          Last edited by Alastair; 10-24-2008, 05:10 AM.

                          Comment


                            #14
                            Re: unstable

                            Jeff,

                            I have had similar problems with browses doing weird things in design mode on an XP Pro machine. Just the other day I renamed the column of a browse and after completing the change of properties, most of the browse disappeared, not quite like your example but similar. I also swapped to form view and then back to design and the browse came back, but there is definetly something strange going on!

                            Up to now I have only had this fault occur once, but problems like the screen corruption (see previous post) are happening each time I start Alpha.

                            Comment


                              #15
                              Re: unstable

                              I don't have V9 but feel you really need to push to get these issues addressed before the next release of Alpha (V10). Otherwise that is it, no more bug fixes and you will have to either live with it or pay to upgrade and hope the problems have been fixed or will be fixed in that version. Databases need stability and I suspect many of the problems are down to the developer rather than Alpha. However, when you get experienced users like Cal also commenting on the instability there is a very high chance that there is a genuine problem.

                              If Alpha haven't responded keep sending the emails and if possible call them. They seem to be reasonable people and I'm not sure how many emails they receive in the course of week but its not unthinkable that some go astray.

                              Comment

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