I have two questions. I'm not a database developer, so hopefully these will be fairly easy...

Here's the background:
I have a client who tracks a significant amount of his manufacturing business using a custom-built Paradox database on a Novell network. They use MAS 90 for their accounting system. They would like to integrate Paradox (at the Invoices) into automatically into MAS 90. Right now, they enter each order separately into both systems. MAS 90 has a product called Visual Integrator which was designed for this purpose. I'm having a MAS 90 consultant come in to evaluate and set this part up.

First Question:
The Invoice form contains fields from several different tables. It looks like all the screens are using Paradox Forms rather than a front-end GUI. We can print the Invoice right from the Paradox form, but how can I easily export this same information into a file for the Visual Integrator to import? Printing to a file has too many escape sequences, fonts, etc. Visual Integrator claims to work with any ODBC 3.5 or higher database, but the MAS 90 consultant said that it would be better to go to a file and verify the validity before updating the MAS 90. What's the easiest way to export all the info from this Paradox form to a file??

Second Question:
This client is currently on Paradox version 8. They were told by Corel that v8 is no longer supported, so we have decided to upgrade to v10. Does anyone out there know of problems or issues I should watch out for? - Are there any reasons why we would Not want to upgrade to v10???

Thanks. Just wanted to ask before messing things up...

Thanks,
Jon

I've upgraded many of my paradox 8 apps to 10 without any hassle. Remember that you need to have NON delivered items, such as FSL forms and RSL reports to upgrade the app, since FDL forms and RDL reports CANNOT be upgraded.

To upgrade a form or report, simply open it in v 10 and resave. Remember that this is an operation you cannot undo, so keep a backup of all the app.

About the forms, i think you're (and even your DB consultant) messing up things.

Let's be clear: you can read and write to paradox tables by many means, and albeit some problems all will be right.

That said, that's a TOTALLY different thing from being able to import paradox FORMS in something else; i think this is a totally untried thing, and the only way to do that is to reverse engineer the internal FSL format, in all its details...

That's LOTS of work, and i don't think it's a viable solution, also because IT'S NOT NECESSARY.

If i understand correctly, all you want is to have DATA authomatically imported from the Pdox system to the MAS, and you can achieve this by the ONLY mean of accessing pdox tables, leaving unchanged and untouched paradox forms.

If all you need is insertion, all is fairly simple: all you need to have is a flag field in every table you need to import, which will be off until the row hasn't been imported and will be turned on after import, so importing any row only one time.

Instead, if you need to have a full sync of the pdox db with the mas, you can surely have it, but it will be more complex since you'll have also to manage updates on both sides, and syncing will have to select the most recent row.

Bye!