I'm going to be doing some first-time network development using
Paradox tables with 10 users accessing them over an NT network. I've
never done network access of a Paradox table and was wondering if
someone could point me in the direction of:

        The best way to set up this kind of link up
        Tips on optimizing the BDE for 10 users

We will be accessing a master inventory table and 4 lookups all on the
server. Should I move the lookups to local machines? Should I use
cached updates? Are there settings in the BDE that will keep lock
tables from growing?

Any assistance is greatly appreciated.

Bill Artemik
----------------------------------------------
Programmer
Wakefield Engineering, Inc.
----------------------------------------------

I'm going to be doing some first-time network development using
Paradox tables with 10 users accessing them over an NT network. I've
never done network access of a Paradox table and was wondering if
someone could point me in the direction of:

        The best way to set up this kind of link up
        Tips on optimizing the BDE for 10 users

We will be accessing a master inventory table and 4 lookups all on the
server. Should I move the lookups to local machines? Should I use
cached updates? Are there settings in the BDE that will keep lock
tables from growing?

Any assistance is greatly appreciated.

Bill Artemik
----------------------------------------------
Programmer
Wakefield Engineering, Inc.
----------------------------------------------

1. On the NT server, turn off Opportunistic Locking (see
help). If running Win 95 workstations, find the registry key
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/System/CurrentControlSet/Services/VxD/VRED
IR "DiscardCacheOnOpen" and set it to 1. If you don't have
that registry key, get VRDRUPD.EXE from the Microsoft Web
site and run it on the workstations.

2. If using a workgroup, set Local Share in the BDE to True,
if not, don't.

3. Don't use Cached Updates unless you have to. Paradox can
only use them in DirtyRead mode which means that if any other
user has changed /anything/ in the record, the cached update
will fail.

4. If NT Workgroup, install the BDE on the workstations as
well as the server.

5. Open all your tables explicitly when required and close
them when you are finished with them. The OnShow and
CloseQuery events of a form are OK for this. If using Delphi
3, put <table>.FlushBuffers in the AfterPost event of each
table. If using Delphi 1 or 2, call dbiSaveChanges in the
AfterPost event instead.

6. Hold your lookup tables locally but *not* in the same
folder as the application. A sub-folder will do.

7. Get hold of Tutilxxx.zip (where xxx is the version of the
BDE you will be running and Tutl32de.zip from the Borland web
site and wrap Tutl32 in a utility for your application to
repair any indexes which go might go out of date.

If you do all this, Paradox tables will be very stable in the
multi-user environment. If users need to see changes to the
server data, consider putting a call to <table>.refresh in an
OnTimer event.

Hope this helps,

Thanks for the tips about Interbase. We are looking at it seriously. I
have just received data from Borland about Interbase and am in the
process of comparing it and MS SQL Server 6.5.

In the mean time, however, I have to get a project up and running in a
hurry and will be having about 8 data entry clerks entering
information into an inventory screen. The last time my counterpart
used this method the lock files grew to HUGE sizes and really slowed
down the system. Neither he or I have a great deal of experience using
the BDE on a network-shared database file system in a windows
environment.

If you have any tips on improving the performance of the file sharing
aspects of the BDE using a Paradox table, it would be greatly
appreciated. I don't expect to get the speed of SQL but I don't have a
choice right now.

Thanks in advance for any helpful suggestions.

Bill

Bill:

I am just looking at MSSQL vs Interbase on the same server, and haven't seen significant differences -
but my tests are still early.

Re lock files grown too large: make sure that the application data and net file are separate:

1) put exe in its own directory
2) put data in its own directory
3) put netfile in its own directory - on the file server
4) make sure each user has their own PRIVATE directory
5) put the reports in a separate directory
6) Note that Reportsmith invokes its own instance of the BDE and can cause problems if the private
directory is not set.
7) Make sure that everyone has the proper access rights to all the files.
8) Make an application group on the file server that has all the required permissions, and then assign
each user as a member of the group.

Get a copy of our "Delphi & Networks" article - it has a lot about setting up the BDE

Hope that helps.