Macon Systems, Inc.

Right mouse menu for controls on views      The Find Database Elements tool can be called directly from any view by using the right mouse menu when focus is on one of the controls in the view. Select Find Database Elements from the right mouse menu and this tool will be opened with a search set up and run for the field you had focus on, including it's table. If you then wish to search for this field in all tables, click the +T button.

PDF files in Reports      Specific pages of PDF files can be set as the background to pages of a report. See the PIcture Tab of the report Object Properties Wizard for more details.

Design Table Tab for Structure Fields      This new tab, labeled All-F (for Formula) includes all the field properties that relate to the structure of the field.

PDF files as View page background PDF files can be set as the background to pages of a report. If both the view and the PDF have more than one page, the page background of each page of the view will be the corresponding page of the PDF. This is very useful for presenting multi-page forms for data entry where the data entry fields on each page of the form can be placed in their actual location on the form.

PDF View Control A control that will display PDF files can be placed on any page of a view. The macro command SetPDFFieldImage sets which PDF file to display. The standard controls are available for scrolling, zooming, and paging through the pages of the document. This can be used to create a page on a view that could have a list of PDF documents in one browse control view and when each document is selected in this control, it will display in a PDF control that occupies the rest of the page. Use a record display macro in the browse control view that presents the list of documents to contain the code that makes the SetPDFFieldImage call.

PDF files printed using PrintBitmap command      The PrintBitmap macro command can print a range of pages from a PDF file.

SetLogControl New codes are:

     m      when used with M, only shows the divider line ahead of the level 0 macro (the macro directly triggered by the user). the divider line for the macros called by the level 0 macro are suppressed. Use this to provide a very compact Log file that can show the called macros in a single spaced list. Using m will cause the complete suppression of log entries for macros that you may not want to see in a summary log such as Init view, Void Edit, Edit Record, Display Record, Field Enter, Field Change, Field Exit, Find Mode, Record Mode, Add Mode, Edit Mode, Close View, Report Section.

     g      Suppresses the progress messages that DataChange formats may be configured to display when they are running. This allows you to see the messages

External Program Access Permissions      Access to the database by other software using the ODBC protocol can be controlled according to the user group that the program uses when it logs onto the database. This database property is set on the Database Settings Control Tab by choosing Main Menu option File | Database Settings. It can also be set using macro command SetSystemControl (ctl,val1,val2,val3,val4) with ctl=2. There are 3 settings:

           val1=0 Allow access from All User Groups (Default)

           val1=1 Allow access from Administrator Group Only

           val1=2 Disallow access from All User Groups

Performance Enhancements Several internal improvements have helped speed up operation of the program.

Database Error Log Error and information messages in previous versions have been written into each user's daily LOG file in the user's C:\ADBMW program directory. See ADBMW.LOG Log File for details on these logs. A select few of the messages that are deemed most important to be viewed are now written, for all users of the database, into a collection file stored in the same directory as the ADB database file itself. This file is named DatabaseName.LOG where DatbaseName is the name of the database. For example, for the sample database ADBMSAMP.ADB this file would be called ADBMSAMP.LOG and be located in the same directory as ADBMSAMP.ADB. This file will contain the most important error messages for ALL the users that use this database. The contents of this file should be viewed in as editor such as WordPad from time to time to see if anything out of the ordinary is occuring with the database. Each message in the LOG file included the user name, and date and time of the entry. Examples of the kind of message that might show up in this file are: Secondary key errors if any of the secondary keys are in error, file damage, memory corruption errors. Possible remedial action that these messages would indicate as appropriate would include running the Validate DB Structure tool on the Tools menu option, and/or performing a Pack Tables on the Database menu option. If all the message for a given time frame are for only one user, when other users have been in the database during the same period of time, this might indicate some localized problem with that particular pc.

           The mechanism that the program uses for deciding if a particular message should be sent to this collection LOG file is if the message contains the characters ^^^ (3 carat characters). If you wanted to include your own messages in this file, you could do so by using a command such as

     WriteADBMLog "^^^LOGON", UserName & " " & TimeStamp

in one of your macros. This example if placed in the Open Database Macro would write an entry for each user when they logged on to the database.

Table Link Handling Some major internal enhancements have been made to the way the program stores and works with the Table Links during program operation. You will not see anything different when using the program, but the entire operation of the table links and link lookups is now more robust.