Open Access User Group Meeting - 8 April 97 TIP: If your browser doesn't word-wrap select FILE/SAVE LOCATION and view this file with your word processor. Notice of Annual General Meeting The annual general meeting will be held on 10 June 1997. Please attend because important decisions will be made about the future of the Group. De-Incorporation Included with the February Newsletter was a proposal from Judy Jeffery that the Group be "de-incorporated". This would save government fees and public liability insurance (which is required for any incorporated group). It was decided at the April meeting that all members would be approached to seek agreement to this proposal. At least 75% of members must agree to the proposal before it can be adopted at the Annual General Meeting, to be held on 10 June 1997. It is proposed that we form an unincorporated association to continue the good work of the Group. A separate voting form is being sent out to all members on this issue - please ensure that you return the form by the nominated date. Q & A ("Show and Tell") Corrupt Database Records David Roscoe brought along a disk with a (very) corrupt database. He was resigned to losing the data but wanted to save the structure of the data by deleting all records and then enter new records. However, when he "purged" the records and tried resizing the Resize function terminated with an error "duplicate value in unique key". This was apparently because the corrupted data contained blanks in a unique key field. The suggested solution, which appeared to work, was to go to Database/Design/Modify_File and set the unique key field to "key" or "non-key". After this Resize worked and there were nil records, as intended. The field could then be set back to "unique key". Network Problems Network users are reminded that Open Access network creates "&" files for temporary processing. If unusual things are happening such as locked screens or printers not working, try exiting to DOS (all OA users) and deleting all files starting with & in any directories included in the OA Searching Order for every PC using OA on the network. Xtree is handy for doing this on the local PC and fileserver. Just set the file specification to &*.* and press "G" for global display. This displays all "&" files. PC Topics HTML Michael Paine gave a presentation on the use of Hypertext Mark Up Language for World Wide Web pages - see separate notes. Backing Up Keith O'Donnell, Lindy Kidman and Michael Paine outlined some tips for backing up data. Michael uses PKZIP to create compressed files of important data and then transfers these files to an Iomega Zip disk (with 100Mb capacity). The advantages of using Pkzip instead of DOS Backup are that data is compressed and only data that has changed is processed (using the -u parameter). Michael has automated the back-up procedures using Open Access compiler. The OA source code is: PUT 'ZIPPING FILES TO c:\OAZIP' s1 = '' PUT DO NEWLINE INPUT fd IS "ziplist" WHILE NOT EOF(fd) s1 = READLINE(fd) PUT DO NEWLINE,s1 s1 = TRIM(s1) IF LENGTH(s1) > 0 s1 = 'c:\oazip\' & s1 EXECUTE 'pkzip -u ' & s1 END IF END WHILE INPUT fd END This program only works if Compiled and Linked (available with OA4). The EXECUTE command runs the specified DOS file (in this case PKZIP.EXE) and includes parameters. which are sequentially obtained from the text file ZIPLIST.TXT. That file contains the name of the ZIP file and the full path of the files to be compressed to that ZIP file. For example ZIPLIST.TXT might contain the entries: adr c:\oadata\adr\*.* utility c:\oadata\utility\*.* utility c:\bat\*.bat The first line creates or updates a compressed file c:\oazip\adr.zip (the path is set in the OA source code) using all files in the directory c:\oadata\adr. To further automate the task, Michael created an OA Macro (MAKE_ZIP.MON) which starts the compiled program from the Main Options menu. He also has a DOS batch file to invoke OA with this macro [make_zip.bat] echo off echo Zipping and backing up important data cd \oa4 oa4 m=make_zip cd\ backup c:\oazip\*.zip a: (or a similar backup command) Lindy showed how she calls up DOS batch files from the OA Applications Menu: Daily_backup /dayback ( c:\oa4\dayback.bat in invoked) Keith demonstrated INTERLNK.EXE, the file transfer utility which comes with MS DOS 5 and above. This uses software and a null-modem cable to set up one PC solely as a file-server. The other PC, which is running INTERLNK.EXE then has access to the hard disk and floppy disk of the "server" PC as extra drive letters (e.g. e: and f:). These letters are automatically assigned by INTERLNK. Creating custom OA configurations for different applications Keith also demonstrated a neat way of having a different OA configuration for each "application". He starts OA using the following type of batch file: echo off [c:\oa4.bat] echo Loading Open Access Application cd \oa4 copy config.%1 config.oa4 oa4 copy config.oa4 config.%1 cd\ The %1 substitutes a value in the batch file. From DOS the batch file is started with a 3-letter parameter, such as OA4 XXX. This copies the file CONFIG.XXX, if it exists, to CONFIG.OA4 then starts OA. On exiting OA, any changes to the configuration (e.g. screen colours or searching order) are copied to the file CONFIG.XXX (or if it doesn't exist, a new file is created). It is then available the next time that OA4 XXX is entered. Any number of CONFIG files can be created in this way, provided that the 3-letter suffix is unique. Using OA data in Word for Windows February's newsletter included tips for "mail merging" OA data into Word for Windows (Winword), by converting the OA database tables to dBase format. Keith demonstrated an extra feature of Winword Mail Marge - the "Catalog" function. This creates output which is similar to the Records section of an OA print mask. That is the records are listed down the page, rather than one record per page with a "Form" mail merge. In this way it is very easy to create, say, an attractive phone list from CARDSPI.DF. The Winword mail merge dialog box has a Query button which allows the selection of certain dBase records and also provides sorting of records. Also the TAB dialog box allows "leaders" to be included with tabbed spaces. For example: John Smith ................................................. 888 9999 Email to the Group Subject: OAUG - CMOS Batteries From: Brian Macgeorge I notice the mention in the last newsletter of CMOS battery problems. My recent experience was with such a battery which exploded, spraying black smoke and its volatile contents around the inside of the system unit. This left many metal parts such as jumper pins corroded and much of the case black and pitted. The system is now functional after replacing the case and all cables and washing the modem, sound card, disk controller, video card and mother board with de-greasing spray, old toothbrush and garden hose before drying with high pressure air hose and a few days under a fan. ... Regards, Brian Macgeorge Notice: Users should not act solely on the basis of the material contained in this document. Items contained in this document are presented as possible solutions to problems but do not constitute advice. In particular, no assurance can be given that the possible solutions will work in every situation or that loss of data will not occur. Always back-up data before trying to rectify a problem.