Re: VFP 6 via ODBC and data integrity questions

Currently they are using a VFP client app, the actual program is not installed. I just discovered that the suggestion you offered (about a key table) is being used by this client. Would the sys() function work through ODBC w/o the full VFP install? How do I lock the database through PHP and ODBC for a moment?? I cannot find any information on this. Thanks for your help. Brian PJC Services At 03:13 PM 2/3/2003, you wrote:

There's an alternate route, but I've used it only over a network, not across the internet. Create a keys table which has two fields - tablename and keyvalue. Create a Get_VFP_Key function with one parameter, the tablename, which returns the keyvalue for that table name. Get_VFP_Key gets a lock on the row containing the tablename, grabs the value, increments it according to whatever scheme you are using, writes the new value and releases the lock. A friend of mine used the ascii table and generated base 256 keys, rather an exceptional fellow. The problem I see here is latency and a locking problem. Alternately, if the machine you are hitting is running VFP, why not use its native sys(2015) (or 2017 - can't remember just now) to generate a random key. HTH - Miles Thompson BTW Character-based primary keys are quite common in the VFP world because FoxPro did not cleanly handle a mix of numeric and character fields in the WHERE portion of a SELECT. It wanted all character values, so don't be too hard on the morons. How are they handling the generation of primary keys? At 09:43 AM 2/3/2003 -0500, Brian Evans wrote:

Good day all, I have just began work on a project to let users subscribe to a service and place orders into a database that is VFP 6 based. Using PHP4, I am able to interface with their program (that also uses ODBC locally) in all aspects (INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, and SELECT). My worries come when inserting a new user/order from the web. The morons who designed the database made the Primary Key as character and NULLable (once only of course), but I have to deal with that. My question is this... How can I know the new user I INSERT will be unique? (the field is character, but counts like a number field) This especially holds true since I have to deal with local users possibly adding at the exact same moment as PHP (ie. a racing issue). Can anyone tell me how to avoid problems? Would odbc_prepare() reserve a new key for me? Thanks. Brian PJC Services P.S. Kudos to all of the developers. This is a great job you guys are doing. -- PHP Database Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php

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