Simplicty and flexibility!

The Wizzardry of Installing DataEase 8 Applications on a Windows server.

Running a DataEase application in a network environment, locking strategy, magic switches that release unimagined bliss and happiness. Are they real or is it pure wishful thinking, policy and salesman's s..?

It has been a long honoured breed of DataEase specialist that has made their living from investigating deep obscure switches, buffer setting, .ini files, registry settings in Windows NT, XP, 2003R2, 2008R2, Windows 7,8,9,10... Decoding ZTERMDEF and CONFIG.DAT and then based on all this research offer their hard earned knowledge to the highest bidder.

But don't you ask yourself. If this was all really necessary, why didn't we or Microsoft simply do this as default? More or less just make it work out of the box?

We do and we did. Obviously a lot of water has flowed under many bridges since the early dawn of DataEaseness and Widonwsness, and even though we are rather inept we do pick up on things eventually.

The believers in conspiracy theories will say that we plant bugs and select the wrong settings to generate consultancy fees, but really! We have more than enough problems with the bugs we inadvertently make to actually plant some to make a day of it.

When we make a discovery that will improve the everyday life of dataeasekind we talk about it,we write about it, we include it in our distributions - we simply do everything we can to make sure it improve the users experience.

So what about these switches and secret settings that can make my application run like lightning?

There is only one! 

Opportunistic Locking!

if you set your application up with Opportunistic Locking you avoid the big Pandora?s box which is Network and Locking trouble.

It is like Smoking. 

Drinking, eating to much, lack of exercise etc. is bad for you but smoking is the worst.

If you don?t smoke you can drink, eat too much and be a couch potato and it is still not as bad for your health as smoking is on its own!

And the really bad thing is that if you smoke, all those other vices triple or quadruple in badness…

Locking is that to DataEase on a Windows Server.

Full or Basic locking is like Marlboro Red and Marlboro Light. The latter seems better, but in reality it is as bad for you. 

It is a marketing ploy that  sail under false flag designed to make the prevaricator and self-deceptionist happy.

The problem is locking in itself, or rather the concept of it.

If you use locking, you end up in all this stuff that Servers do these days to keep track of things for you and that?s where all the problems start to arise.

Opportunistic Locking is not locking at all. It simply re-read data before saving and if the data on file has changed since you read the record you are about to change, it will simply fail.

Anyway. If you set up your application with Opportunistic locking and you don?t allow some crazy Server Administrator to lock the server inside a cabinet, cut all cables and throw away the key (This is a metaphor for how most DBA that has been to at least one Microsoft DBA course prefer to configure servers), you should be good from the get go!

So the recipe is:

1. Install the Server with default settings, don?t play with all the stuff that Microsoft didn?t dare activating themselves.
2. Install DataEase with default settings.
3. Make sure your application is configured with Opportunistic Locking.

4. Hit play!

If things are slow and troublesome after this it is not due to some server wizardry or magic, but good old lack of indexes, wrong index order etc… Things that need to be investigated and corrected in the Application design ;-)

Published: 25/08/14 - 16:11:45 (Ulrik J Hoegh-Krohn)

Related Articles

The Wizzardry of Installing DataEase 8 Applications on a Windows server.