I've just updated my app from 2.02 b14 to 2.03 b4 and posted the update on
my website.

Suddenly I have two customers (whoc have just updated) who are both getting
Error #100s, but with different messages.

The first customer gets : ElevateDB Error #100 There is an error in the
metadata for the table staff (The character set does not match the character
set in use by the engine)

....and the second customer gets : ElevateDB Error #100 An error occurred
with the statement at line 3 and column 23 (There is an error in the
metadata for the table custom_patient_fields (The internal version does not
match the version in the configuration or catalog))

I can't even run "REPAIR TABLE" because it just throws the same error
messages.

I've quickly pulled the update (i.e. to return to 2.02 b14) because I can't
afford for 100s of other customers experiencing this.

Please can you tell me how to fix these two errors and also why they
occurred?

Thanks,

Hedley

Hedley,

<< I've just updated my app from 2.02 b14 to 2.03 b4 and posted the update
on my website.

Suddenly I have two customers (whoc have just updated) who are both getting
Error #100s, but with different messages.

The first customer gets : ElevateDB Error #100 There is an error in the
metadata for the table staff (The character set does not match the character
set in use by the engine)

...and the second customer gets : ElevateDB Error #100 An error occurred
with the statement at line 3 and column 23 (There is an error in the
metadata for the table custom_patient_fields (The internal version does not
match the version in the configuration or catalog)) >>

These are normal error messages that occur when you have issues with
mismatches between the engine type being used (ANSI or Unicode) and
mismatches between the version of the table files being used with a
different version of the database catalog.

Did any of the database tables get moved around, copied, renamed, restored
from a backup, etc. during the upgrade to 2.03 B4 ?  IOW, did anything else
in the application change ?

--
Tim Young
Elevate Software
www.elevatesoft.com

Hedley,

Forgot this part:

<< Please can you tell me how to fix these two errors and also why they
occurred? >>

You can't really "fix" them since they involve something wrong with a) the
compiler vs. the database files and b) the table files vs. the catalog file.

What we need to do is figure out what happened to the files that caused them
to be mismatched.  Usually a restore from a backup is the culprit where a
table is restored but not the database catalog, or vice-versa.

--
Tim Young
Elevate Software
www.elevatesoft.com

Tim,

> What we need to do is figure out what happened to the files that caused
> them to be mismatched.  Usually a restore from a backup is the culprit
> where a table is restored but not the database catalog, or vice-versa.

I've been seeing this as well, and I'm pretty sure that it's not a restore
issue.  Any copies or movement of the data is being done entire database and
catalog at the same time.   Unfortunately I have not been able to track down
the actual steps required to produce the error but will keep working on
tracking it down.

--

---------------------------------------
 Terry Swiers
 Millennium Software, Inc.
 http://www.1000years.com
 http://www.atrex.com

 Atrex Inventory Control/POS -
    Big business features without spending big business bucks!

Atrex Electronic Support Options:
 Atrex Knowledgebase: http://www.atrex.com/atrexkb.asp
 Email: mailto:support@atrex.com
 Newsgroup: news://news.1000years.com/millennium.atrex
 Fax: 1-925-829-1851
 Phone: 1-925-828-5892 (M-F, 9a-5p Pacific)
 ---------------------------------------

Terry,

<< I've been seeing this as well, and I'm pretty sure that it's not a
restore issue.  Any copies or movement of the data is being done entire
database and catalog at the same time.   Unfortunately I have not been able
to track down the actual steps required to produce the error but will keep
working on tracking it down. >>

If you see anything concrete that you can reproduce, please let me know.

Thanks,

--
Tim Young
Elevate Software
www.elevatesoft.com

Tim,

> If you see anything concrete that you can reproduce, please let me know.

Will do.  And I'll try to make sure that the problem isn't my Anti-Virus
update again.

--

---------------------------------------
 Terry Swiers
 Millennium Software, Inc.
 http://www.1000years.com
 http://www.atrex.com

 Atrex Inventory Control/POS -
    Big business features without spending big business bucks!

Atrex Electronic Support Options:
 Atrex Knowledgebase: http://www.atrex.com/atrexkb.asp
 Email: mailto:support@atrex.com
 Newsgroup: news://news.1000years.com/millennium.atrex
 Fax: 1-925-829-1851
 Phone: 1-925-828-5892 (M-F, 9a-5p Pacific)
 ---------------------------------------

Terry,

<< Will do.  And I'll try to make sure that the problem isn't my Anti-Virus
update again. >>

I downloaded AVG 9, and I'm going to try it this week and see what's going
on.

--
Tim Young
Elevate Software
www.elevatesoft.com

Hi Tim,

The latest build of my app is m currently on 2.03 build 22.

Over the last couple of months, I've been getting an increasing number of customers receiving this error :-

ElevateDB Error #100 An error occurred with the statement at line 3 and column 23 (There is an error in the
metadata for the table custom_patient_fields (The internal version does not match the version in the configuration or catalog))

The table varies as does the "statement" description.

REPAIR TABLE fails (it just throws the same error) and the only way to solve the problem is to restore from a backup, which means that customers have lost data.

I've used DBISAM and then EDB for nearly a decade and until a couple of months ago, I could count on one hand the number of database corruption issues that we've experienced - however in the last couple of months we've seen this exact same problem with a dozen or so clients.

Sometimes I'm able to get round the problem by copying in the 3 files relating to the table which is corrupt (i.e. the .EDBTbl, EDBIdx and EDBBlb files) from a very recent backup.

Other times, it seems that it's the "EDBDatabase.EDBCat" file itself that has been corrupted and I have to do a full restore.

In none of the cases has the database been moved / copied / changed in anyway.

The last customer this happened to said it got corrupted immediately after a backup operation - and that is something that was also mentioned by a couple of other clients too.

Here's how I do a backup :-

       try { cGlobals.DB.ExecSQL("DROP STORE \"Backup_Store\" KEEP CONTENTS"); }
       catch (Exception) { }

       cGlobals.DB.ExecSQL("CREATE STORE \"Backup_Store\" AS LOCAL PATH '" + dir + "'");
       (cGlobals.DB as cDB_EDB).ExecSQLAsync("BACKUP DATABASE \"" + cDB_EDB.EDB_DBNAME + "\" AS \"" + fn + "\" TO STORE \"Backup_Store\" COMPRESSION " + compression_level + " INCLUDE CATALOG", false);
       cGlobals.DB.ExecSQL("DROP STORE \"Backup_Store\" KEEP CONTENTS");

I then zip up the contents of "dir" to a ZIP file. Nothing is touched in the original database, so I don't know why this would affect the EDBDatabase.EDBCat file.

This problem only occurs with NETWORK setups where multiple computers are connecting via the same EDBConfig file, using a UNC network path (e.g. \\server\shared_database") so that all PCs connect the same way. This is the way I've always used EDB since I switched from DBISAM and until now it's worked fine.

I've known for some time that AVAST! corrupts EDB when it runs across a network this way, hence we've always recommended AVG, but I'm now concerned that maybe AVG is doing the same.

Aside from WHY this is happening, my bigger concern is HOW TO FIX IT when it does happens? If the "EDBDatabase.EDBCatalog" file is corrupted is there any way to rebuild it?

Any help would be very much appreciated Tim!

Thanks,

Hedley

Hedley,

<< Over the last couple of months, I've been getting an increasing number of
customers receiving this error :-

ElevateDB Error #100 An error occurred with the statement at line 3 and
column 23 (There is an error in the
metadata for the table custom_patient_fields (The internal version does not
match the version in the configuration or catalog)) >>

Are you ever altering any of the tables in your application, or are your
users ?  Or optimizing/repairing tables ?

Look at the dates and times on the database catalog files and relevant table
files when this happens.  If they are different, then the issue is that
something is interfering with the proper operation of EDB when it tries to
create/move table files during an alter, repair, or optimize operation.

<< REPAIR TABLE fails (it just throws the same error) and the only way to
solve the problem is to restore from a backup, which means that customers
have lost data. >>

Actually, you can fix this by restoring the .old version of the table files
that should be present in the database directory.  There is also an .old
file for the edbdatabase.edbcat file during such operations.

<< Other times, it seems that it's the "EDBDatabase.EDBCat" file itself that
has been corrupted and I have to do a full restore. >>

Just to clarify - nothing is getting "corrupted" exactly.  The problem is
that the structure in the database catalog does not match the table files,
and this is due to a checksum of the basic structure not matching between
the two.

<< The last customer this happened to said it got corrupted immediately
after a backup operation - and that is something that was also mentioned by
a couple of other clients too. >>

There's no way that a backup is modifying either the catalog or the table
files.  You can go ahead and see this for yourself - run a backup a hundred
times or more, and you won't see the dates/times change on the source
catalog or table files.

<< I've known for some time that AVAST! corrupts EDB when it runs across a
network this way, hence we've always recommended AVG, but I'm now concerned
that maybe AVG is doing the same. >>

It's certainly possible.  Anti-virus software is a big problem for database
applications that copy/move around table files.  However, in order for it to
be a problem, you need to be executing an operation that actually
copies/moves the table files, and a backup operation is definitely not one
of those operations.

<< Aside from WHY this is happening, my bigger concern is HOW TO FIX IT when
it does happens? If the "EDBDatabase.EDBCatalog" file is corrupted is there
any way to rebuild it? >>

See above.

--
Tim Young
Elevate Software
www.elevatesoft.com

<< It's certainly possible.  Anti-virus software is a big problem for database
applications that copy/move around table files.  However, in order for it to
be a problem, you need to be executing an operation that actually
copies/moves the table files, and a backup operation is definitely not one
of those operations. >>

Sorry to hijack this thread a little bit but I just wanted to chime in and say that Anti-virus software is a nightmare.  I have had a few complaints in the past from customers about application performance - the culprit has always been AV software.  Only last week I saw this happen with large Microsoft SQL Server databases.  Performance was extremely slow and lots of timeouts were being experienced.  It turned out that AV software had just been installed on the database server.  Once this was removed performance returned to normal.