Hello All,

Firstly, be advised I have very limited experience with networks.

The application was created using Paradox 8.

Paradox 8 Runtime is used for the network installations.

The problem....

I have successfully installed my Paradox application on networks using a
client/server setup. In each case the server simply hosts the data and the
application with Paradox Runtime installed on each client computer only. I
have experienced no problems with this setup.

Recently I installed the application on a peer to peer network (Win XP) with
five concurrent users including the host computer. Paradox Runtime was
installed on each of the computers. The application resides in a shared
folder on the host.

When first installed, the application seemed to run acceptably. However, I
forgot to set Local Share to true and experienced table corruption which I
have since fixed.

Having set Local Share to true on each of the computers I now have the
following problem.

If the application is started on the Host Computer first then none of the
other three users can get access. However, if the application is not started
on the host computer then all four of the remaining computers can gain
access concurrently and the host computer cannot get access.

Strangely tho, if I set Local Share to false on the host computer and Local
Share to True on the other four, all five computers can get concurrent
access.

I an totally confused and have no clue as how to resolve the issue.

If I do not set Local Share to True on the host computer will I continue to
experience data corruption?

Any help will be gratefully accepted.

John

I'm going to guess that the 'host' computer has the netdir set to the local
c: drive rather than a share like the other computers on the network.

You can't do that (if that is indeed the situation). Rather, you can't use
a path to the netdir that differs in more than ONLY the drive letter.

Every machine must have, character for character, the same exact path. No
exceptions.....Other than the drive letter.

NOT RESOLVES to the same thing. EXACTLY the same thing.

If I guessed wrong, ignore this post. :-)


---------------------------------------------------------
Tony McGuire

Many Thanks Tony,

This indeed may be the situation...

I will check it out.

John

"Tony McGuire" <png.paradoxcommunity@com> wrote

And when you have checked this. Get everyone out of Paradox and delete all
Paradox .lck and .net files.

Anderes

And be aware it is a BAD idea to have a machine acting as server and
workstation even in a p to p environment. To much potential for problems
there. Unless your data is essentially worthless, spend the $400 it will cost
you to dedicate a machine to host the data and NOT be a workstation.

Denn Santoro
President
Resource Development Associates
http://www.RDAWorldWide.Com
Offices in the United States and Germany
Providing solutions to health care, business, governments and non-profits
since 1982

It sounds like the Paradox NET file setting (in the BDE Config) on the
data host PC is set incorrectly. Other than the drive letter (C:, E:,
etc.), the path to the NET file must be the same on all PCs.

There's been some debate over the years about whether Local Share should
be true on PCs not hosting the data, but it absolutely _MUST_ be true on
the PC hosting the data if the data is going to be accessed from that
PC. Paradox supposedly knows whether data is stored on a remote or local
drive. If Local Share is false, it assumes that no other user or PC is
going to access data on local drives and buffers data more aggressively
- it keeps more edits and inserts in memory and writes them to disk less
often. Meanwhile other users and PCs see that the data is on a remote
drive and writes any edits and inserts to the drive as well as local
buffers. When the local copy of Paradox gets around to updating the
drive from the buffers, the data on the drive no longer agrees with the
data in the buffers, resulting in table corruptions.

There's also a Windows configuration that should be changed:
Opportunistic Locking. Search the news groups or Google that to find out
how to turn it off on the PC hosting the data (note that this should be
turned off on any file server hosting Paradox tables as well). Opp
Locking attempts to speed up data access by predicting what files will
be accessed next and locking the file ahead of time. This will corrupt
Paradox tables in a hurry - strangely enough, it'll corrupt Access and
other Microsoft application files as well.

As a side note, if this application is uses more than "just once in a
while", the data really needs to be on a file server. There's lots of
issues around using a workstation PC as a data server. It doesn't have
to be a very powerful PC if it's just hosting Paradox data and apps; a
500 MHz Pentium with a reasonable amount of memory, a decent network
card, and a 10GB harddrive running Win2K would do fine for the small
network you're describing. Or even a server appliance like a SnapServer.

John Hurren wrote:

Thank you ALL,

Your recommendations are most gratefully accepted and will be meticulously
heeded.

I feel a server coming on...

Sincere thanks,

John

"John Hurren" <jhurren (AT) exemail (DOT) com.au> wrote