Open Access User Group Meeting - 16 April 96

Annual General Meeting - separate notes

Venue

Chatswood RSL was unable to provide telephone service for our
Internet demonstration therefore Judy kindly offered to hold the
meeting at her place. She tried to contact by telephone all the
people who might be attending the meeting to advise them of the
change in venue.

Our thanks to Judy for her hospitality.



Question & Answer

Postscript Printers - Line drawing

Terry explained a problem he has encountered using Postscript
printers with Open Access. The IBM line-draw characters do not
print correctly. With the help of a Postscript "guru" he has
developed a replacement for the Open Access Postscript header
file CONFIG.PS. This ensures that, when a Postscript printer is
used from within Open Access, the IBM line-draw characters work
correctly. Terry has prepared a library sheet on this subject
which includes the changes to CONFIG.PS. If you don't want to
type them in yourself you can obtain a diskette from Terry for
$10 (to cover handling costs) or download the file for free from
Michael Paine's Internet page (look for Download OA-PRT.ZIP).



Network Speed - Record Locking

Phil Thompson described some experiments he has conducted with 
processing time on a Novell network. The problem was that a
routine maintenance operation on a database table was tasking a
long time over the network but was fast on a standalone PC. He
found a reference to record locking  on an obscure page in the
OA manual and tried the tip - it worked! The tip is that if you
are processing many records in a view then apply a  private lock
on the view. This means that OA does not have to lock, process
and unlock individual records as it works through the view. A
disadvantage with private locks is that other users cannot
access the records but if you are doing maintenance then
generally you do want others changing those records.

To lock a view in database (network version), retrieve your
records then select LOCK from the Database Operations Menu.
Select PRIVATE LOCK  - you can then UPDATE the records.

To lock a view in Programmer/Compiler create & USE the view then
					LOCK viewname PRIVATE

Lantastic (ed:Keith to check)

Keith O'Donnell has encountered system crashes (e.g.
"Unimplemented p-code") when using Open Access on a Lanatastic
network. It turns out that the FILES setting in CONFIG.SYS needs
to be increased to allow numerous files to be open at the same
time. FILES=500 seems to work. The problem might have been that
OA was unable to create a temporary working file or open an
overlay file due to the DOS limit on the number of open files. 

Internet Demonstration

Richard Litchfield gave an excellent demonstration of surfing
the Internet - so much so that the meeting didn't finish until
about 10pm! Richard's notes are attached and his "tour" is
available on Michael Paine's internet page.

Technical Notes by Michael Paine - Internet Access

Richard's notes provide  a comprehensive guide to the internet.
I thought I might provide some extra notes on my experiences
gaining access to the Internet. It is based on the components of
my system - other configurations are possible.



Function 	Component 	Comment 

Web Browser running on your PC 	Netscape Navigator 2.0 	Freeware
for individual users. Available from most service providers. 

Link to Unix running on your PC 	Trumpet Winsock 	Evaluation
copy available from some service providers 

User Interface 	Windows 3.1 	Netscape runs better on a 32-bit
system such as Windows 95 but the 16 bit version is fine. 

PC Operating System 	Novell DOS 7.0 	- 

PC 	486 with 8Mb RAM & 540Mb HD 	- 

Modem 	Multitech ZDX modem 28.8K 	28.8K modem is best but 19K or
even 14k are okay for amateur use 

Service Provider 	Grove Creek Observatory/APANA  	APANA is for
non-commerncial users. See PC magazines for numerous other
providers. 

the Internet! 	- 	- 





The "Winsock" is the unpublicised component of the system. It is
needed by Netscape in order to talk to the Unix operating system
of the service provider. For Windows 3.1 it must be loaded and
linked to the service provider, via modem, before Netscape is
loaded. My service provider, Grove Creek Observatory, has a
bulletin board with Netscape , Trumpet Winsock and several other
utilities available for downloading. Use a comms package such as
Telix to dial up their BBS on 02 4270225 and login as "guest"
(the Open Access comms package has some protocol difficulties
but it will work if you do not have Telix). You can then
register with them and obtain a one-month trial account. The
copy of Trumpet Winsock is pre-configured for the GCO site,
other than your name and password. Netscape will need
configuring, as described in the help pages of the BBS.

I should mention that Grove Creek Observatory is a voluntary
service - the people running it are amateur astronomers who use
the Internet for their hobby. You cannot expect the same level
of service (and access) as a commercial service provider so
please be patient and try to avoid e-mailing them for support on
trivial matters - there are numerous "help" pages with advice.

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