Skip to main content

Another VFP 9 Cool Feature: MAKETRANSACTABLE()

If you're like me, you may have older Visual FoxPro applications that were upgraded from earlier versions and still use free tables. And why not? Databases certainly offer some benefits but they can be "clunky" to move around.
 
One of the reasons many developers switched to using databases and the DBC files were to support transactions : - that is the ability to start a transaction, update a bunch of files and then if one thing didn't work right, roll it all back to the original source.
 
Well now,  in Visual FoxPro 9 (Europa) , FREE Tables can be made transactable as well with the new MAKETRANSACTABLE() function.
 
Consider the following:
 
USE CUSTOMERS
MAKETRANSACTABLE( "CUSTOMERS")
BEGIN TRANSACTION
 
DELETE ALL
IF MESSAGEBOX("Did you really want to delete all your customers",4) <> 6
    ROLLBACK
ENDIF
END TRANSACTION
 
Note: that each table must be called MAKETRANSACTABLE in order to work. This means a few extra calls when your table is open.
 
When you close the table, the MAKETRANSACTABLE setting is removed.
 
One of the big challenges with older applications is ensuring that everything is always updated properly. With this great new feature, you can use Transactions with your free tables, ensuring that if something goes wrong, everything can be updated properly. Awesome feature.

Comments

Randy Jean said…
This could be a lifesaver for some work I'm doing with a new client that has all free tables and wants to implement buffering and transactions. Luckily, they've already deployed under VFP9.
April 20, 2007 at 1:24 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Who Wants To Be Logical? I Do! I Don't! (with Claude)

In my book, Towards Consciousness, I explore PET , a theory that attempts to explain consciousness and possibly how it might apply to AI. As part of the conversations with AI series, I've included this conversation with Claude.AI in which we were talking about something very different and yet the conversation redirected itself back to PET. For the record, there is no such thing as "Colfsity". A It's interesting to me that people want to proclaim their distinction from being rigid and unlike machines, yet they also complain that the "best" people keep a rigid schedule, regular routines and logic understanding of issues. That's a perceptive observation about a real tension in how people think about themselves and what they value. There does seem to be this paradox where rigidity is simultaneously rejected as "robotic" or inhuman, yet praised when it appears as discipline, consistency, or logical thinking. I think part of what's happening is t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Merry Christmas

Whether you celebrate now, have already celebrated your past holiday, are planning to, or not, I hope you find yourself surrounded by family and those you love during this holiday season and are able to remember fondly those who are not with you. We often find ourselves buried in work, or too distracted by other problems, to share and remember a few moments with those closest to us. So many of us are separated by huge distances, we often find it easier to focus on those who are out of arm's reach yet so easy to connect with online, instead of those who are right beside us. So do yourself a favour, put down the keyboard (stylus, mouse, etc) and spend that time. I know I will. Merry Christmas. Powered by ScribeFire .
4 comments
Read more

Comparing education systems based on their technology

(yes, I originally found this blog because of Scoble's note on it BUT it was kind of interesting all the same) Read Alex Mallet's summary of his first week at MIT. Malletrivia: Summary of the first complete week Wow - "There's an incredible amount of material packed into each lecture" - and it sounds interesting... Compared to some of the lecture content I have seen at our universities, you really must get what you pay for. While it sounds like Alex is writing frantically down notes in his classes, at least he's finding something worth writing about in them. Case in point: one of our local universities ( Carleton ) puts some lecture classes on the TV (like many universities do) - but you would think they purposely find the most boring professors to teach them. They put up PowerPoint slides with 30 points on them, speak in monotone voice (yes, imagine the typical caricature of the university lecture from years ago), tell the students to print their...
8 comments
Read more