Open Access User Group Meeting - 13 October 1998 Q & A + News Q."Upgrading" to WIN98 on a network An organisation which runs a Novell network with a mixture of DOS and WIN31.11 applications will be converting some of the WIN3.11 to WIN98. What problems can be expected. A. As far as DOS applications such as Open Access are concerned there should not be problems if the Novell network is retained. If OA is to be launched from within WIN98 then it will be necessary to "Capture" the appropriate printers using the "Printer Settings" feature of WIN98. If the network is converted to Microsoft Network then a differnet version of Open Access Network needs to be installed (Netbios version instead of Novell version). Existing data and application should be unaffected but "record locking" might not work properly so be careful with applications which apply more than one user to modify records at the same time. Some users have also had WIN98 crash when launching the Netbios version OA - this needs further investigation. Q. Running a batch file from within AUTOEXEC.BAT A. If a batch file (such as a menu system) needs to be loaded from AUTOEXEC.BAT it is best to use the CALL command. This allows control to be returned to AUTOEXEC.BAT once the batch file has terminated. The syntax is: [autoexec.bat] path = ... ... call mymenu.bat .... [mymenu.bat] ... exit Exporting data from OA Database Cross-tabulations The Table function of Open Access Database provides a very powerfiul means of analysing data. One limitation is that the data is in a fairly unusable text format, with horizontal and vertical line and dashes. Solution 1 Michael Paine has written an OA program to process the output from a cross tabulation and create a comma separated variable (CSV) file. This can then be directly imported into Excel (or converted to an OA Spreadsheet using the file converter). The program can be downloaded from the User Group web page. It is supplied "as is" without support. Solution 2 "Integrate" the database records to Spreadsheet and use the "Data manager" and "Analyzer" functions of the advanced spreadsheet menu ( ) to create a cross-tabulation within a spreadsheet. Solution 3 Make a copy (Dir) of the two files [table].tbd and [table].tbi and name them [table].df and [table].if respectively. These can then be retrieved in a query (Query Compose FROM [table] ) but the row labels will be missing. Use of Repeat in Database Print Forms Terry demonstrated a problem he came across when altering a database print form. He used a macro to copy some items on a print mask but the macro accidently set the field "justification" to Repeat instead of Right. This caused some unusual things to appear in the printout. For example, a "sum" field in the totals section should have printed "10" but "101" appeared. This turned out to be because the field width was set to 3 and the command was repeating "10" until it filled the field. If the width had been 7 the output would have been "1010101". The main use for Repeat is to crated lines across the page. Instead is typing 80 dashes "-" you can type just one , set the field width to 80 and the Justification to Repeat: DNA Computing After the break Michael Paine gave a talk about a major breakthrough in computing - the use of DNA to perform trillions of computations in parallel. See separate sheet (also available on the Internet). 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.