>>>>>Hi,
>>>>>
>>>>>Is it possible to add/include a file to an EXE file? As if the file was included at design/compile time?
>>>>>
>>>>>TIA
>>>>
>>>>I have to ask, why? There could be other way to accomplish what you need.
>>>
>>>One of the files used by SDT is SDTMeta.dbf. Sometimes I get an error from the customer that this file cannot be read by the application. To prevent these errors, ideally, I would include this file into the application (into the .EXE).
>>>But, for some customers, this file has to be updated/changed, when the application is being updated. Reason is that these customers have custom fields or some other custom settings that require this file to be different from other customers.
>>>Therefore, I would like to include this file, SDTMeta.dbf into the EXE; but for those that need to have a custom version, modify it - during the update - and then store it into the .EXE
>>
>>Just keep the usual file into EXE (with different name) and if you have problems reading the file that is outside the EXE,
>>extract it, update it and then use it :-)
>>Something like:
>>

>>TRY
>>    USE SDTMeta IN 0 SHARED
>>CATCH
>>       STRTOFILE(FILETOSTR("YourStroredFile.DDD"), Full_path_for_SDTMeta.DBF, 0)
>>       UPDATE Full_path_for_SDTMeta.DBF to have all records
>>       USE SDTMeta IN 0 SHARED
>>ENDTRY
>>

>>Of course this is very simplified :-)
>
>This is a good approach. But I am thinking that the error message the customer gets is not because the file is "bad" but because the OS has a glitch. So, I am thinking of enclosing the USE SDTMeta (just like you have) in TRY CATCH and do it 3 times, with a delay of about a second. Then, if it fails, even on the 3rd try, suppress the error (in Catch) and go on. Currently the application completely fails on Read error. If I suppress the error, I tested, the application still works. Just some SDT Filters may not be working 100%. But this is minor compared to the application crashing.
>Thank you.

It is still odd that this specific file gives you problems. After working with DBF's for 25 years I have not seen something like this happening without a reason. Once I had an issue where a DBF file got corrupted sporadically, and for several years there was a workaround in the application that automatically rebuilt this file when this happened. The true source was never found until I investigated the application and found out a code that under certain circumstances deleted the CDX file of this table. This code was supposed to run only in Developermode, but found its way into production.

One Question would be what the error is when this file cannot be opened (file corruption or access denied?). An alternative way to have this more resilient could be to change the format to XML or CSV. But I still believe there must be an error that causes the issue in the first place.