FREECHAIN

[Don Coleman]

I posted this early last week and had a number of people reply stating this
is unusual and I should be concerned about its cause.  I know I have not
posted the code, primarily because I don't expect a contributor to this list
to sift through it all.  In fact, this client has now advocated a set time
each day to get everyone off their system for 10 minutes after lunch and run
freechn.exe plus do several file index rebuilds as a preventive when they
are less busy to hopefully eliminate the need to do it near the end of the
day when they need every available minute.  I always thought the freechn had
to be done with everyone out of the file like Mile S., however I see today
that Ken states this is unnecessary.  I assume when fP automatically
rebuilds the freechain and it never seems to finish, that automatic rebuild
should be stopped before doing it manually.  Perhaps one of the reasons I
thought everyone needed to be out of the file was because the freechain
rebuild never seemed to finish, yet of everyone exits the file it finishes
in one minute or so.

Below again is the flow of data in and out of my fP app.

My application runs an ascii file import process every 10 minutes importing
data from one alien application.  My app. also has a socket interface
connected to a second alien application importing data from that
application.  This client is in the process of transitioning from one
clinical prescription system to another, hence the two systems with two
different methods of bringing data into my fP app.  This transition has been
underway for 11 months and will take another 6-12 months to complete (I'm
told).

Approximately 40,000 records are brought into my fP application (a workflow
application which tracks each Rx from the time into the building until it
leaves the building) from the two interfaces combined.  Each completely
processed and shipped Rx is then archived to a mirror file each night
beginning at 12:15AM.  This occurs after the network share (drive) is
disabled and all users are off the system.  In my archive script I rebuild
the freechain in my main Rx file before the archive procedure starts and
again as the last step before the script exits.  Problems occur (freechain
errors either during the archive process itself or shortly thereafter when
they begin processing prescriptions again) if I don't do this both at both
the beginning and end of the script.  During the day with 40-60 users on the
system certain Rx's will be "voided" which copies the Rx record to the
mirror file and deletes it out of the active Rx file.  Depending on the day
this may be enough to cause a freechain rebuild by itself.  The customer
also periodically needs to print multiple delivery sheets (packing slips)
and manually archive those orders after printing them during the day.  If
they don't disable both interfaces, archiving those records will surely
cause a freechain rebuild.  I always assumed it was because I had two
interfaces assigning data to free records in the file (which were most
likely "used" records the previous day but have been archived and are now
free records) and at the same time was archiving data which was creating
"new" free records.

Anyone who can provide some guidance on this would be appreciated by both
myself and the client.  Before this installation I had probably not needed
to run freechain on a system 5 times in my life.  At this site it may well
happen 5 times in a week.  

Don Coleman
Donald G. Coleman, Consultant
402 Andrew Circle
Indiana, PA 15701
dcoleman at dgcreact.com
(724) 349-6302