How to Recreate Clipper Index on Win 10 1

[TomDunne]

Hi

I am supporting a multi user accounting package which runs on Win 10. The software has a reindex feature in the case of index corruption which brings down all stations for a couple of minutes when run. I have a requirement to update a couple of clipper index files (NTX) a couple of times a hour to accomplish a data update issue. I have written a small program in Clipper 5.2 to update these index files & can run the small update exe on a XP workstation & all is good. What is the easiest way to enable this exe to run in a Win 10 environment? - I am familiar with Clipper & FoxPro & Visual Fox Pro.

Tom

 

[Mike Lewis]

Are you running this from within VFP? If so, you should be able to run it under Windows 10 in exactly the same way as under XP. Just use either the VFP RUN command or the Windows ShellExecute() function to execute the Clipper executable.

If you don't know how to use ShellExecute(), see here.

Mike

__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

Visual FoxPro articles, tips and downloads

 

[TomDunne]

Thanks for the reply Mike - I know I am missing something - when I try to run the clipper 5.2 exe in windows 10 I get the standard message "Unsupported 16 Bit application - cannot start or run due to incompatibility with 64 bit versions of windows" - When I run it from within a VFP 9 using the RUN command I get the same message -

 

[jlcca]

If you have the Clipper 5.2 source code, you can re-compile it using 64-bit Harbour, available from

https://github.com/vszakats/harbour-core

Joe

 

[TamarGranor]

Windows 10 doesn't support 16-bit programs. You'll have to run in a virtual machine of some sort. I haven't used this article, but not only did it turn up first in a search, but it was linked in a post by someone answering a similar question:

https://www.groovypost.com/howto/enable-16-bit-application-support-windows-10/

Tamar

 

[Mike Lewis]

Another possibility ....

A firm called Progress have an ODBC driver that claims to be able to create Clipper indexes. It's a 32-bit driver, so should run on Windows 10.

It should be easy to write a small VFP program that connects to the driver (using SQLCONNECT()) and sends a CREATE INDEX command (via SQLEXEC()).

The firm's website is here:

https://www.progress.com/odbc/clipper

If you search their documentation for CREATE INDEX, you will see the syntax for the relevant command.

I have never used this product, so this is not a recommendation. But it would be worth taking a look.

Mike

__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

Visual FoxPro articles, tips and downloads

 

[TomDunne]

Hi Guys - thanks for all the suggestions - I am under a lot of pressure on this one & don't have much time to sort it - I came across these guys -

https://dbfmanager.com

- they have a product called IndexMan - which is command line driven & can create NTX files on the fly - I can call it as required from VFP - it's fairly cheap & got me out of a hole on this occasion - it really is a one off problem so I'm happy enough to take the easy way out - When I get a bit of time I will start looking at more elegant / programmatic solutions - thanks again