Safe to use an old .mb file?

C P

Delphi Developer

Safe to use an old .mb file?

2006-11-28 02:56:29 AM
off-topic0
My application is using BDE 5.2.0.2, and Paradox 5/7 tables. I have a
customer that lost the .MB file for one of my tables. Of course, they don't
have a recent backup. They do have an old backup of the database (over 6
months old). Is it safe for them to copy in the old .MB file? The table
(MyTable.DB) has a single memo field of length 20 (so as I understand it,
the first 20 characters of data are stored in MyTable.DB, and the rest is in
MyTable.MB). My application is storing Rich Text in this memo field. Users
are not able to delete records from MyTable.DB, so there shouldn't be any
problems with orphaned info in the MyTable.MB file. If the only thing
they'll lose by copying in the old .MB file is some of the text from the
memo field, that's acceptable. But does this run a risk of causing
problems? Presumably doing this could truncate some of the text in this
field to 20 characters.
Thanks.

Steven Green

Delphi Developer

2006-11-28 03:40:13 AM

Re:Safe to use an old .mb file?

Quote

Is it safe for them to copy in the old .MB file?
NO!!

Diamond Software Group
www.diamondsg.com/main.htm
Paradox Support & Sales
Diamond Sports Gems
www.diamondsg.com/gemsmain.htm
Sports Memorabilia and Trading Cards
"C P" < XXXX@XXXXX.COM >wrote in message

Quote

My application is using BDE 5.2.0.2, and Paradox 5/7 tables. I have a
customer that lost the .MB file for one of my tables. Of course, they
don't have a recent backup. They do have an old backup of the database
(over 6 months old). Is it safe for them to copy in the old .MB file?
The table (MyTable.DB) has a single memo field of length 20 (so as I
understand it, the first 20 characters of data are stored in MyTable.DB,
and the rest is in MyTable.MB). My application is storing Rich Text in
this memo field. Users are not able to delete records from MyTable.DB, so
there shouldn't be any problems with orphaned info in the MyTable.MB file.
If the only thing they'll lose by copying in the old .MB file is some of
the text from the memo field, that's acceptable. But does this run a risk
of causing problems? Presumably doing this could truncate some of the
text in this field to 20 characters.

Thanks.

Bill Todd

Delphi Developer

2006-11-28 05:50:37 AM

Re:Safe to use an old .mb file?

C P wrote:

Quote

My application is using BDE 5.2.0.2, and Paradox 5/7 tables. I have a
customer that lost the .MB file for one of my tables. Of course, they
don't have a recent backup. They do have an old backup of the database
(over 6 months old). Is it safe for them to copy in the old .MB file?
The table (MyTable.DB) has a single memo field of length 20 (so as I
understand it, the first 20 characters of data are stored in MyTable.DB,
and the rest is in MyTable.MB). My application is storing Rich Text in
this memo field. Users are not able to delete records from MyTable.DB, so
there shouldn't be any problems with orphaned info in the MyTable.MB file.
If the only thing they'll lose by copying in the old .MB file is some of the text from the memo field, that's acceptable. But does this run a risk of causing problems? Presumably doing this could truncate some of the text in this field to 20 characters.

Thanks.
As Steve said, the answer is no. All of the files that are part of a

Paradox table contain a version number in the file header. If the version
number does not match the version number of the .DB file you cannot access
the file.
You will have to restore the entire table to another directory then write
a program to copy the memo data from the old file to the new file.
--
Bill Todd (TeamB)

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