Dxmaint

[Richard Kreiss]

I realize that but tell a client who wants to keep all data - forever.

I created the qualifier, history for the purpose of being able to maintain
historical data.

However, there are some reports that are based on being able to look back to
the beginning of his business over 30 years ago.  This was before I handled
his system.  Oddly, I got this client from another client who at the time
had retail stores and my current client was a vendor.  The original client
wrote software for his business and wrote the programming for this client.
When the first client sold his business, he handed me the account.  I
updated most of the programs except for a number of the reports which I will
not go near the logic.

There is one file which contains data for product usage from the day the
system went live.	That file is not as large as the order data file but
is over 3 Mb in size now.  Some of the indexes are much larger.

I have given up arguing with my client over the amount of data kept on-line.
Every year I archive to the history qualifier records that are 4 years old
or older.  This keeps the file from growing too large- record wise.
However, the downside of this is the indexes in this qualifier are very
large.  When I post to this file, I delete all of the automatic indexes
first and then rebuild them.

There is also a third qualifier called backup.  When an order is entered
from the header file, the details are written to the order key and
key.backup.  In this way, if the primary key has issues, I can rebuild the
primary order key.  This happened a few years back and allow me to get them
back up and running quickly.  I just cleared the key which contained
corrupted records and allowed the order clerks to enter the new orders.
That evening, I was able to post back all of the order details which were
appropriate. 

Yes, The system had been backed up the night before, once to a tape drive
the other to a backup computer.  However, this was faster and allowed them
to continue working.

I also maintain copies of my client's data and programs on my server.  This
has allow me to reinstall full applications when some of my smaller clients
have had computer failures and had not backed up their systems.  Their data
was not up to date but they felt it was better than having none at all.

I do have versions of filePro going back to 3.0 on my system.  However, the
oldest installation any of my clients are using is 4.5.  filePro 4.8 will
not run on a 64 bit system as some of the DLL files won't load. I get an
error message.  I run filePro versions earlier the 5.0 on my Windows 7 or
windows XP computers. I do have an older computer with Windows XP.  I have
some older machines that I am considering installing DOS 5.0 on.  I haven't
run into anyone still on DOS but who knows?

Richard Kreiss

PS: It doesn't pay to argue data storage with clients any more.  The prices
for storage has dropped greatly over the years.   My first 8 MB hard drive
cost close to $8,000 and a few year later a 35 Mb hard drive cost $675.00;
as did a 17" color monitor.  Today one can purchase a 4Tb drive for under
$75.00 and the latest M.2 120GB SSD for under $200.00.  

My own computer has a 256GB Samsung SSD and a 950 EVO Samsung 120GB SSD as
well as a 4TB internal drive and a 1 Tb esata drive.  The SSD's are very
much faster than the mechanical drives.   Just consider the cost of memory
sticks; these have come down in price and gained more storage capacity and
speed.

The only issue I have with the branded server manufacturers is the pricing
on their drives.  I would love to have client's purchase servers without
drives as they can be populated less expensively from other outlets.
However, they want the manufactures warrantee on the whole box and are
willing to pay for it.






> -----Original Message-----
> From: Filepro-list [mailto:filepro-list-
> bounces+rkreiss=verizon.net at lists.celestial.com] On Behalf Of Jose
Lerebours
> via Filepro-list
> Sent: Sunday, October 29, 2017 6:16 PM
> To: Richard Kreiss <rkreiss at gccconsulting.net>;
'filepro-list at lists.celestial.com'
> <filepro-list at lists.celestial.com>
> Subject: Re: Dxmaint
> 
> On 10/29/2017 02:13 PM, Richard Kreiss via Filepro-list wrote:
> > Situation:
> >
> > The is a service that rebuilds all of the auto indexes for their order
header &
> order detail files.  This service starts at 4 AM on Sunday and take a long
time to
> run as there are 10 order header indexes and 12 order detail indexes.
Both files
> have a qualifier and these indexes are also rebuilt.
> >
> > The primary order header file has 1, 075,176 records and the order
detail file
> has 22.719,170 records.  Most of these indexes are multi key.  The header
file
> rebuilds fairly quickly.  It is the detail file that takes a lot of time.
> 
> Have you ever considered normalizing your files, using smaller tables and
> archiving data?
> 
> You really do not need your daily operation files with more than what is
"open"
> not older than 120 days, beyond that, arhive it.
> 
> So, given an sales order module where:
> 
> dailyOrdersh is archived to dailyOrdersha dailyOrdersd is archived to
> dailyOrdersda
> 
> In doing so, you can basically rebuild indexes on your daily operations
files in
> matter of minutes since your combined records of 3+ millions should shrink
to a
> few thousands (even if as many as 100K records, you will be way ahead of
the
> game).
> 
> Just because you can keep millions of records in a file does not mean it
is a good
> idea to do so.
> 
> All that said, a replica of your existing code should be good enough to
grant
> access to archived records so, there should be very little work from your
part to
> get this done and have a solid long term solution to your problem.
> 
> Finally, I wonder if @menu show "@File not available due to daily
> maintenance!" could help after checking dow() ... and a predictable time
frame
> you want to safe guard ... !?!
> 
> 
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