File restructure bastardization

[Don Coleman]

John Esak wrote:

>>Hopefully I took all necessary precautions to minimize any risks.  As
>>stated earlier, this is the first time I felt the need to handle the
>>restructure in this way.  This client runs 24X7X365 excepting the 2.5
>>hours per night that everyone is required to log off during their system
>>backup.  Thank you again for all the advice & suggestions.
>>
>>Don Coleman
>>    
>>
>
>Boy, I wish I had your "excepting the 2.5 hours per night"!!!  We run truly
>24/7/365 and we are constantly struggling with how and when to re-define
>maps. It is a very big problem. So far, one I have not come up with any good
>answer for yet.  It would be great if all the brain-trusts here could come
>up with something do-able in this regard.  On the other hand, I have
>developed a processing control system that allows me to insert new
>processing directly into the running systems *without* losing even one
>keystroke from the many people who are running the program(s) from clerk at
>that very second. It took quite a while to implement, but had I not done it
>over 3 years ago, we would have had nearly 200+ times that we would have had
>to bring people down for enhancements, fixes, and new features. This system
>is far to involved to just lay out in a quick message here, so I'm
>scheduling it for one of the Addendum CD's, but I sure would like a good
>solution to the re-defining maps on files when there is NO time, not even
>one minute between times the file is accessed/updated. A kicker, but not
>really too important is that the files are physically large in number of
>records and size of each record. Any restructuring takes a bit of time even
>on our super-fast servers.
>
>(Incidentally, I have been down lots of paths on this already, mostly
>involving running in a transactional mode during the restructure... then
>posting all the transactions to the modified file. Basically, the systems we
>run are not very conducive sort of thing.  Just too damn problematic.)
>
>John
>
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>
>
>  
>
This would appear to be a stupid question but I'll ask it as a 
compliment to Bob Stockler and his abilities with OS tools and utilities.

Is there a way around a file restructure at the OS level that would not 
require an fP file to be unaccessed during a restructure?  If anyone 
could devise such a utility it may well be him.  Of course, I am 
primarily working in the Windows world which is an additional nail in my 
coffin.

Don Coleman