Re: looking for tips: huge archive - many clients

Stefano,

I think you are still "OK" with the limits of Clipper and Netware 3.12.
I agree with the immediate upgrade to 5.2e.  Here are a couple of
other thing I would do.

Get a handle on the source code.  Get Click or some other documenter
software.  I don't know if they can handle 230K line of code.

Don't change to Windows servers.  140 clients X 2 hours each.  Plus
much more when there are problems. Remember, as soon as you touch a
machine anything that goes wrong a month later is your fault even if it
is a power supply!

3.12 and 5.2e go well together.  No optlocks and other problems.

3.12 may mean the hardware is older.  Even if it is not, I would have a
backup server ready. The backup server must be at least as fast.  For a
server speed  is not always a function of CPU.  SCSI vs IDE, multiple
network cards...

If the size of the 500 meg archives gets out of control, consider a new
archive strategy.  Maybe yearly archives. Divide and conquer.

I have never had so many users but I have had larger databases on a
3.12 server and it NEVER failed unless I brought it down for scheduled
maintenance.

Mike




Stefano Lambertini wrote:
> hello all,
> i'm dealing with a Clipper (5.2c) program used to manage
> planning-accountability-production-[other...] on two industrial plant
(about
> 250 employees).
> About 140 clients open the same archives (300 dbf with 3-4 ntx index
each).
> The archives dimensions are out of control - some of them are over
500Mbyte,
> shared by and old Novell file server.
> And, in the best tradition, no documentation are available other than
the
> source code (about  230.000 lines).
> Could you help me to find information related to
> -Clipper/DBF dimensional limits
> -Clipper concurrent DBF access
> -change from Novell (3.12) to Windows (2k3)
>
> Thank you in advance,
> Stefano
>
> grazie in anticipo per qualunque aiuto,
> Stefano