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Q119284: HOWTO: Distribute a Large Database with an Application

Article: Q119284
Product(s): Microsoft FoxPro
Version(s): 3.0,5.0,6.0
Operating System(s): 
Keyword(s): kb3rdparty kberrmsg kbvfp300 kbvfp500 kbvfp600
Last Modified: 01-NOV-2001

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The information in this article applies to:

- Microsoft Visual FoxPro for Windows, versions 3.0, 5.0, 6.0 
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SUMMARY
=======

It is often desirable to ship large databases with applications. However, the
Setup Wizard is not designed to split large files and may not be able to
compress large database files, possibly resulting in the error message
"Incorrect number of bytes written to disk - source file or destination disk may
be corrupted - use ChkDsk."

To work around the size limitations of the Setup Wizard, you can use a number of
third-party compression utilities, such as PKZIP, LHARC, StuffIt, and so on, to
compress large database files. Many of these compression utilities are available
on bulletin board services.

This article demonstrates how to use one of these utilities, PKZIP, to compress a
large database so that it can be shipped with an application.

MORE INFORMATION
================

To ship a large database with your application, compress the database file,
convert it to a self-extracting executable file, and then execute some code to
expand (decompress) the compressed file.

For example, suppose you want to compress the files PICFILES.DBF and
PICFILES.FPT. If you are using PKWare's PKZIP utility, you can compress these
files into a self-extracting executable file named PICDBF.EXE by typing the
following commands at the MS-DOS command prompt:

     PKZIP picdbf picfiles.dbf
     PKZIP picdbf picfiles.fpt
     ZIP2EXE picdbf

Move the newly-created PICDBF.EXE file to your source files directory. Do NOT put
the PICFILES.DBF or PICFILES.FPT file in this directory.

Add the following code to the first program in your project:

     * This code assumes the data file to be extracted is named
     * PICFILES.DBF. The example tested for this article was over 5 MB,
     * and compressed to 1.3 MB. The K value of 240 used in the RUN
     * command is an empirical value that has proven successful in our
     * tests, but your results may vary. A lower value may be possible.

     IF !FILE('picfiles.dbf') OR !FILE('picfiles.fpt')

        * The data is shipped as a self-extracting executable with the
        * name PICDBF.EXE. It may be wise to include the -o parameter to
        * overwrite files when extracting databases.

        RUN /240 picdbf.exe -o

        * The WAIT window below will keep FoxPro from continuing in
        * multithreaded operating systems such as Microsoft Windows NT.

        DO WHILE !FILE('picfiles.fpt')
           WAIT WINDOW 'Extracting files...' TIMEOUT 5
        ENDDO

     ENDIF

IMPORTANT: The compression software that you decide to use may require additional
licensing for distribution in a commercial application. Contact the compression
vendor for licensing details.

The file-compression utilities mentioned above are manufactured by vendors
independent of Microsoft; we make no warranty, implied or otherwise, regarding
these products' performance or reliability.

Additional query words:

======================================================================
Keywords          : kb3rdparty kberrmsg kbvfp300 kbvfp500 kbvfp600 
Technology        : kbVFPsearch kbAudDeveloper kbVFP300 kbVFP500 kbVFP600
Version           : :3.0,5.0,6.0
Issue type        : kbhowto

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