error code meaning

I am suddenly getting an error when I try to post a record to a table.  The code is 30463. How do I find out what this means and what causes it?

the error message itself would be much more useful.. there are only a handful of possible contexts.. invalid field value, key violation, not in edit mode, damaged file, etc..

Steven Green
Senior Software Engineer
Paradox Support Specialist DOS/WIN

The text of the errorMessage() reads "an error was triggered in the 'postRecord' method on an object of TCursor type".  That seemed pretty generic so I added a display of the error code to my message display and got the 30463 value.  The table in question contains small bmp images (320 x 200 pixels) of scanned book covers.  I'm not close to the maximum number of records, so I'm thinking that I may be running up against a maximum physical table size.  Is that plausible?

first, generic advice.. memo/blob fields introduce many potential problems.. if you keep the files separate, have a field with the file name, and let the default Windows viewer handle it, you'll have a much more stable system

table size, depending on block size, can be up to 2 gig

now, your error.. postrecord failed.. have you looked at the record, to see why? 

Steven Green
Senior Software Engineer
Paradox Support Specialist DOS/WIN

The record is fine. I have been adding similar records throughout the day. But I appear to be at the 2 gig limit for the table size. I have a couple of questions about using the windows viewer to access the images. First, I'm a self taught Paradox coder, (my native coding language is COBOL) and I haven't figured out how to call external applications like the photo viewer. Is there an online reference tutorial for that somewhere? Second, wouldn't that require that the images have to reside in a fixed directory? If, for some reason, I reorganized the folders containing the images then wouldn't there either be some coding changes required or a massive database update in order to reference the new location?  Third, I've been using the current table for nearly a year now and have not encounted any issues, so what exactly are the potential problems of blob usage?

if you're at the 2 gig limit, you'll need to move some records or change the table structure.. FWIW, you shouldn't have a table more than half the size of the max, no matter what block size.. sec indexes don't work correctly, past that point

the danger of holding the images like that, is that if the memo file itself becomes damaged, you'll lose it all

if you're storing the full path of the real files, they can be anywhere you want them to be

plenty of simple "execute" examples here, elsewhere, and in the help files.. Windows itself decides how to "execute" any file type that it already has assigned, just like when you click on it in explorer 

Steven Green
Senior Software Engineer
Paradox Support Specialist DOS/WIN

Ok.  Out of all the files in the database, the image table is the only one that comes anywhere close to the the halfway size of the max, so the majority of the data has no problem with secondary index access.  While I did create secondary indexes on the image table I haven't needed to use them, and probably won't in the forseeable future, so I'm not too worried about that.  The danger of file damage is why I make daily backups, so at the worst I only lose 1 day's worth of input. so I think that's safely covered.  But, if I store the target images externally and save the full path of their location, then re-organizing the file structure would definitely involve a massive database update.  (There are somewhere between 12000 and 13000 volumes in the library and I will eventually have scans of the front and back covers of all of them for reference.)  I can probably devise somesort of batch update function to do that, I'll have to think about it.  That leaves me with figuring out the code for the call to the external application.  I'm fairly new to the forum and site (about 3 hours worth of membership), so if you could point me to the examples here, or the key words I need to enter in the Paradox help files I would appreciate it.  :) 

constant backups are good, very good.. if you're still thinking about it, the keyword is "execute"

welcome to the forums..

Steven Green
Senior Software Engineer
Paradox Support Specialist DOS/WIN

Thanks.  I'll do some research in my object pal manual and see where that takes me.  :)