Upgrading 4.0 Databases to Q&A 5.0
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Gordon Meigs and William (Bill) Halpern are Co-founders and Senior Partners of Professional Computer Technology
Associates; 100 Jerico Drive, Newtown, Pennsylvania 18940. You can contact them at the same CompuServe E-mail
address of 71023,356. Gordon and Bill have used Q&A for many years, and have participated in many
ways to sharing their vast experiences with Q&A. The following information should be considered as a
guideline towards easing the transition from Q&A 4.0 to Q&A 5.0. No guarantees or promises are made
concerning the use of the following information.
1. Be sure all reports in the version 4 database are of the latest generation.
Method 1: run DTFCHECK on the file (DTFCHECK filename.dtf). ( See note
at end of article - TJS )
a) If no warning message, all reports are OK. Proceed with upgrade.
b) If you get a warning, you will also get messages telling you which reports are in danger
(or already "bad"). Design/Redesign these reports to get them to be of the latest generation. or on "warning"
reports, just <F10> through the report design steps.
For "bad" reports, it is likely the corruption is in the Retrieve Spec in the last field on the form. Check there first, and remove any extraneous characters. (If nothing "funny" is found in the last field, check the other fields.)
Method 2: Use Q&A's Report/Design/redesign a report, and <F10> through each report design to resave all reports in the latest generation of the design. (It's worth checking the last field of the form in Retrieve Spec as above).
Method 3: If you have DTFSPECS, you can use it to generate macro files that will automatically Design/Redesign the reports in the database. This is particularly helpful if you have many reports in the file. Each macro created by DTFSPECS does 10 report redesigns. Run Q&A, select Report/Design/Redesign, and select the datafile, then <esc> to the Report Menu, and load the macro (i.e., Shift-F2, Get macros, and find the REPORTSA.MAC, REPORTSB.MAC, etc.). After loading a macro file, one macro (Alt-0 in DTFSPECS version 2.0, Alt-A in version 1.14) will do 10 reports in just a few seconds.
(You can also use method 3 to copy reports from one database to another database of the same form design. You might want to do this to add a newly designed report from your master copy of a database to your clients' copies of the database, or to copy a report from the "active" database (i.e., INVOICE.DTF) to an "archive" database (INV-ARCH.DTF))
2. File/Copy/Copy design only to a new name. This new file will contain only a single generation. Then copy all records to this new file.
3. Make a backup of the file.
4. Change the Date format (to 1), remove any initial @date values (as far as we know, that is the only initial value that gives a problem).
5. Note any Speedy fields, and remove them.
6. Recover the 4.0 file, then convert to 5.0
7. Re-establish @date initial value, and optionally change the date format. (Recommended you do NOT use one of the formats that puts the day first; Q&A can "transpose" day and month (when the day is less than 12 and can therefore also be a month) when importing records, or copying from one file to another).
8. Re-establish Speedy fields.
9. Recover the file again, and run a Mass Update with no update spec.
10. Set the file Sharing Mode to Allow if on a Peer-to-peer network.
11. The new 5.0 format file will have Q&A's horrible default color palette. Run a "Change Pallet" macro you have pre-recorded to change from the default color configuration (to 4.0's palette 2 or 3 - our preferences) and/or define custom palette/individual field colors.
12. To prevent F6 expanded field from trashing a file (when in Retrieve Spec), be SURE no one sets default
fonts in the Write module. Instead, record a "Set Fonts" macro that the operator can run from a new document
that will attach desired fonts to that document.
Regards,
Gordon Meigs