DOS Clipper apps and Windows apps

Applies to: All

If your windows application works concurrently with a CA-Clipper application, and/or if you are accessing DOS-based DBF files, you must do the following:

1. DOS and Windows sorts characters differently! This problem often appears as though data is not being added correctly to a database. The problem is that the DOS-based indexes are being updated using Windows sorting rules, which basically corrupts indexes and causes data to appear as "invalid" or to not appear at all.

Refer to your Apollo help file(s) and search for "OEMCollation" and "sort order". Generally, you must call "SDEEngine.SetMachineCollation" at the start of your application or before you open any tables. This tells Apollo to use DOS-based sorting rules. Furthermore, you must also set OEMTranslate=True for each table object. Refer to your edition of the Apollo help files. For Apollo VCL, you will need to add SDE60 or SDE61 to your uses clause since that unit contains the SDEEngine object.

2. Make sure to set OptimisticBuffering to false. This also applies if you change the data structure of a table.