ISTech Support Forum - PSQL and Microsoft Vista

Lynn_Pantic

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PSQL and Microsoft Vista
01/19/07 at 17:57:23

For those who may be interested, I just got an email from Pervasive confirming that the current release of Pervasive (V9.5) will be compatible and supported on the new Microsoft Vista operating system. Prior versions will not be supported which isn't to say they won't work but just that nobody at Pervasive will give you the time of day to figure out what the problem is if they don't.

IS Tech is a licensed Pervasive reseller for any user interested in upgrading from PSQL 2000 or PSQL 8 as Vista workstations are introduced.

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Lynn Pantic
IS Tech Support
lynn@istechsupport.com

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kkmfg

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Re: PSQL and Microsoft Vista
Reply #1 - 01/21/07 at 10:29:53

Thats nice to know. I certainly won't have any Vista installations if I can help it though.

Also, what are the chances you'll dump Pervasive and go with something better and/or cheaper? The whole hundreds of files thing is generally frowned upon and other database products have better support for modern features. Even DBA Next Generation has moved on to the Firdbird server.

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Collin
K & K Manufacturing, Inc

EvoERP Version 1-22-10 SP3
5 User Workgroup Pervasive 10

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kevind

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Re: PSQL and Microsoft Vista
Reply #2 - 01/22/07 at 06:59:01

I would be scared to death if all my tables were buried in one giant proprietary file.

Having said that, it would be nice if the Database engine were based
on some stable, open source product.

We recently setup KnowledgeTree Open Source for all of our documents.
It uses the LAMP stack (Apache, MySQL, and PHP). Boy, is it stable,
and does it work great!!.

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Kevin Damke
Spectronics Corporation
ISTECH 2004.1 7/26/13 SP1 - 20 user
Evo-ERP Build 7/25/13 T7 -7i R6 - 3 user
(Prev version was 2004.1 10/24/12)
(All Patches Installed as of 7/26/13)
Pervasive 2000i SP4 - Crystal Reports V10

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kkmfg

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Re: PSQL and Microsoft Vista
Reply #3 - 01/22/07 at 09:05:40

Quote from kevind on 01/22/07 at 06:59:01:

I would be scared to death if all my tables were buried in one giant proprietary file.

As opposed to buried in many propietary files? What would the problem be? Mysql tends to store things in only a few files. There are utilities to dump the database contents to textfile for backup purposes. There are pros and cons to each format. Sometimes having a file for each table can make accessing the table faster (upon startup) but sometimes that isn't the case. Storing multiple tables in a file makes for more efficient disk usage but tends to increase the startup overhead.

Also, from my experience, the lots of files approach hasn't helped Pervasive much in the stability dept. The files seem kind of prone to corruption.

Quote:

Having said that, it would be nice if the Database engine were based
on some stable, open source product.

Yeah, Firebird and PostgreSQL are both pretty decent database servers.

Quote:

We recently setup KnowledgeTree Open Source for all of our documents.
It uses the LAMP stack (Apache, MySQL, and PHP). Boy, is it stable,
and does it work great!!.

Yeah, we have a LAMP setup for our website and it works quite well. But MySQL isn't quite up to snuff for business applications. People tend to look more toward something like Firdbird or PostgreSQL for those applications.

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Collin
K & K Manufacturing, Inc

EvoERP Version 1-22-10 SP3
5 User Workgroup Pervasive 10

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kevind

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Re: PSQL and Microsoft Vista
Reply #4 - 01/22/07 at 13:34:15

Here's a question ...
Since DBA is intended for the smaller business, why couldn't dba use
ODBC to access the different tables??

The ODBC drivers for pervasive are very thin since they made the move to
verstion 2000. They scrapped the propritary API and wrote a new one
that was virtually native ODBC.

Would writing to the ODBC layer provide the level of abstraction that would
allow you to use any database product with ODBC drivers?

Just a thought.
Let's face it, the current DBA applications only use the Transactional side
of the pervasive engine.

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Kevin Damke
Spectronics Corporation
ISTECH 2004.1 7/26/13 SP1 - 20 user
Evo-ERP Build 7/25/13 T7 -7i R6 - 3 user
(Prev version was 2004.1 10/24/12)
(All Patches Installed as of 7/26/13)
Pervasive 2000i SP4 - Crystal Reports V10

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kkmfg

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Re: PSQL and Microsoft Vista
Reply #5 - 01/23/07 at 08:33:17

Allow me to put this... in my normal delicate fashion:

Because ODBC kind of sucks and it's slow. Nobody wants to use ODBC unless there's some great reason to do so (like, as you mentioned, allowing for some database server portability) One of the big problems with ODBC is that you get a baseline of functionality but it makes it harder to use more advanced features (because not every product might support those features). Allowing for a variety of database servers is a real two edged sword. It's nice for the customers because then they can choose but it's hell for developers. Of course, it's nice for the developer if they do ever decide to change which DB server they put their blessing on.

<ranting>
Maybe Pervasive would be fine, I don't know. I wish that DBA supported abortable transactions so that an entire transaction could be rolled back if there were a problem in the middle. It seems it currently doesn't do that. Also, DBA seems VERY messy and improper from a database layout perspective. There are tons and tons of tables, many of which contain duplicate data. It's as if the original authors had never heard of normal forms for database layout (as in first, second, third normal form). As you mentioned, and this is related to DBA storing duplicate info, there seems to be very little in the way of relationships in DBA. At the simple end of that would be storing information just once and referring it it in it's proper place. I'm sure DBA does that to some extent but just try asking someone where to go to manually edit some transaction. Seems the normal answer is: DONT! YOU NEVER KNOW WHERE DBA MIGHT HAVE HIDDEN SOMETHING! That, I must say, isn't terribly reassuring.
</ranting>

Now, I like DBA/Evo but I cannot get over feeling awestruck when I see behind the scenes at some of the weird ways DBA is constructed. Of course, every piece of software the size of DBA has more skeletons in it's closet than Jeffery Dahmer. Wink

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Collin
K & K Manufacturing, Inc

EvoERP Version 1-22-10 SP3
5 User Workgroup Pervasive 10

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kevind

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"pony up",
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Re: PSQL and Microsoft Vista
Reply #6 - 01/26/07 at 07:39:49

Thanks for the info.

This thread has kind of gone off topic ( ya think?)

but it's interesting to hear how people visualize things and draw conclusions.

<general rambling>
I believe it certainly can be said that the Pervasive.SQL server product is a significant
overkill for the DBA Classic applications. The TAS applications do not take advantage of either the
Relational Engine, Referential integrity, Security or the ability the server engine has
to perform whole transactions so that All or none of them occur.

You need to remember, that DBA was origonally a DOS application that used Btrieve for
all data access. The program logic used the basic Btrieve record functions to access and manipulate data.

I hold out hope that the EVO product can access and use the Relational side of
the server so that more can be pushed down to the server engine
and the program logic does not read every stinking record in
a file to generate a report (many GL reports come to mind).
</general rambling>

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Kevin Damke
Spectronics Corporation
ISTECH 2004.1 7/26/13 SP1 - 20 user
Evo-ERP Build 7/25/13 T7 -7i R6 - 3 user
(Prev version was 2004.1 10/24/12)
(All Patches Installed as of 7/26/13)
Pervasive 2000i SP4 - Crystal Reports V10

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kkmfg

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Re: PSQL and Microsoft Vista
Reply #7 - 01/26/07 at 09:05:34

Yes, it was originally a DOS app but so was Surfcam and Autocad and you don't see them still using 256 color 640x480 non 3D accelerated graphics now do you? Wink

There comes a time (and that time was a long time ago for DBA) when you've got to get with the times. Maybe btrieve was great back in 1986 but this is 21 years later and people use relational databases now. And so, yes, I too hope that EVO will be modernized and either switch away from Pervasive (like DBA Next Gen has) or at least use the relational side of Pervasive.

And, in all this, I don't mean to place blame on ISTech for the sorry state of things that they inherited. Really the blame should go to DBA's management for stringing along an antique piece of database code for so very long. It really is not that hard to get all of the data out of btrieve and place it into another database format. Granted, that does not solve the referential integrity and data duplication problems but it starts things down the right road.

The big problem here though, TAS hasn't supported using SQL until very recently (if it even does yet. It was supposed to happen pretty soon here!) So DBA hasn't had a lot of choice because TAS is specially setup around btrieve databases. Now I think the support is there but it's probably not terribly well tested.

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Collin
K & K Manufacturing, Inc

EvoERP Version 1-22-10 SP3
5 User Workgroup Pervasive 10

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GasGiant

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Re: PSQL and Microsoft Vista
Reply #8 - 01/26/07 at 10:29:27

My, how timely. Just this morning I had to clean up a mess when WO-I died after thiry-two of forty-five serial numbers were entered. BKICMSTR and BKICLOC took all 45, INVTXN and SERIAL had 33 receipts and the work order showed 44 left to receive! Lovely. I changed the BKIC UOH amounts to 33 and reran WO-I. Then I had to make sure that the work order showed 100% issued on all parts... oops! it was at 102.5%, so I had to WO-G one of each part back into stock before closing the work order. Other than the WIP variance and the totally whacked book value, most of the problem seems to be sorted out, at least enough to ship those 45 products.

So, do you think that I'd like to see abortable, all-or-nothing transactions and normalization? I'd rank it right up there with true user-editable reports Roll Eyes

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kkmfg

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Re: PSQL and Microsoft Vista
Reply #9 - 01/27/07 at 09:59:44

Oddly enough, user editable reports (through converting all reports to Crystal Reports) and a better database engine are my top wants too. And, as evidenced by my recent posts, I hope to do something about both as well.

I hope that ISTech thinks that these things are a priority too. But, I should add to the list: Programs than don't crash when you use the mouse! Mice have been around since the 80's and we've got financial software that blows up if you mouse to a field! That, in my opinion, is the saddest thing of all.

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« Last Edit: 01/27/07 at 11:54:16 by kkmfg »

Collin
K & K Manufacturing, Inc

EvoERP Version 1-22-10 SP3
5 User Workgroup Pervasive 10

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kkmfg

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Re: PSQL and Microsoft Vista
Reply #10 - 01/29/07 at 05:03:24

Well, there might be hope for abortable transactions so the jury is still out on that. I'll try to do some testing this week.

User editable reports... Well, it seems that a watered down version of ReportBuilder was included in TAS. I wonder about the feasibility of either:

1. Having multiple people beg and plead with the company that makes it to impliment all of the standard features in TAS
2. Have people purchase the standard or pro version of RB so that they can use the more advanced features it supports. This, of course, is assuming that Evo could even use reports that included features that it's bundled report editor does not support. I'm not so sure that it would. That is however something to ask either the TAS or RB people about. I think I might do that.

Either way, that would help with the user editable reports.

Normalization: Well, it's time consuming but I would like to see 2nd normal form in DBA. Pervasive does have a relational engine but I think that TAS really only uses the transactional side unless you use the TAS SQL interface, which would totally change all of the DBA code all around. So as long as it would basically be a total overhaul it might as well, at that point, be a database switch to Firebird or PostgreSQL. Not that I forsee a thing like this occurring. It seems to me like we might be stuck with the current database layout. Sad

And I still would like to say: Thank you ISTech for implimenting mousing to fields on some of the screens and keep up the good work. You wouldn't believe how many times a week I have to hear about how stupid it is that people can't use the mouse to go to arbitrary fields. It sounds sort of like more of a TAS problem than a problem with anybody from ISTech doing something wrong but it's terribly annoying. Angry

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Collin
K & K Manufacturing, Inc

EvoERP Version 1-22-10 SP3
5 User Workgroup Pervasive 10

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