> Hello all...
>
> At work I've been trying to use Lotus Approach to manage some dbase flat
> files that are then queried by a number of different Cold Fusion
scripts...
> and I need to run update queries on some of the tables. Obviously I need
a
> primary key to be defined to do that, but I can't for the life of me
figure
> out how to do that in Approach.
>
> I was hoping someone out there has faced the same problem. Approach's
help
> is terrible.
John,
We've used Approach files on a web site for several years (migrating the
200+ tables plus all the forms and applications to Access and then MS SQL
has been a major undertaking). All I can say is you should avoid using
Approach at _all_ costs. There are several problems.
First, Approach keeps it's own proprietary indexes. When you set up your
dBASE ODBC drivers, you'll see that you can't specify an index files, since
Approach does not keep standard dBASE indexes. Now, what do you think
happens when your CF program updates the database? The Approach indexes are
no longer in synch. This has lead to numerous database corruptions for us,
primarily within the 'memo' type fields, which are kept in a separate file
from the fixed-length data fields. I'm amazed that it works at all, but we
have no choice. Whenever possible, we only read from these files now, and
avoid inserts and updates.
Secondly, the latest versions of MDAC (the secure ones, version 2.0 and up
IIRC) no longer have support for updating dBase files. Microsoft claims
they had too many problems with corrupting data (surprise, surprise), so
they simply dropped support for writing to the database. One way around
this is to install the Borland Database Engine on the server and it enables
writing once again. Another alternative might be to use a third party ($$$)
ODBC driver.
Jim
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