coop@cerc.wvu.wvnet.edu (Boris Pelakh) (09/21/89)
A problem with dBASE IV : When a error occurs in a program (still developing ...), and I choose the Cancel option from the menu that pops up, dBASE occasionally locks up with an annoying beep, and the only way to get out is with Ctrl-Alt-Del (pretty ugly). When the system comes back up, some of the files that were open at the moment (especially .MDX files) end up scrambled and need to be recovered with CHKDSK (even uglier). Any suggestions ? A couple of questions : 1. I hear all this great stuff about 1.1. And the question is - WHEN ???!!! Sorry. Just a little anxious. 2. We are writing a system in dBASE IV that requires security. The logon security is nice, but what if a person leaves his terminal unattended for a while - we want to put a screen that will make him to enter a password after let's say 5 min with no key press. Can that be done without tying an extra program to the clock and keyboard interrupt handlers ? Boris Pelakh.
awd@dbase.UUCP (Alastair Dallas) (09/24/89)
In article <234@cerc.wvu.wvnet.edu.edu>, coop@cerc.wvu.wvnet.edu (Boris Pelakh) writes: > A problem with dBASE IV : > > When a error occurs in a program (still developing ...), and > I choose the Cancel option from the menu that pops up, dBASE occasionally > locks up with an annoying beep, and the only way to get out is with > Ctrl-Alt-Del (pretty ugly). When the system comes back up, some of the files > that were open at the moment (especially .MDX files) end up scrambled > and need to be recovered with CHKDSK (even uglier). Any suggestions ? Ctrl-Alt-Del can do some pretty ugly damage, allright. The lock-up and beep are only indirect causes of the problem. Can you give me more information about how to reproduce the lock-up? You might also want to SET AUTOSAVE ON, which will minimize the damage by flushing files to disk whenever they are written. > A couple of questions : > > 1. I hear all this great stuff about 1.1. And the question is - > WHEN ???!!! > Sorry. Just a little anxious. We're anxious, too. We're in "we will ship no dBASE before its time" mode here--what we have in hand is very good, but we want to ship a product that will completely refute any notions that Ashton-Tate is not committed to quality. Answer: not this month; possibly not next month; soon. We have to go through Beta-test before we ship, and that takes some minimum time. > 2. We are writing a system in dBASE IV that requires security. > The logon security is nice, but what if a person leaves his > terminal unattended for a while - we want to put a screen > that will make him to enter a password after let's say 5 min > with no key press. Can that be done without tying an extra > program to the clock and keyboard interrupt handlers ? This is a good idea for 1.2--we could generalize it to something like: ON TIME <time> DO <proc> to perform some procedure at a specified time. Or ON IDLE DO <proc>. For now, if your program is in control, it can logout programmatically whenever it thinks it should. But if the user is sitting in PROTECT or some other full-screen task, you'll need a third-party TSR to preemptively schedule the logout. > Boris Pelakh. /alastair/