Hi. I have a VFP6 application that usually runs on a dedicated computer. The tables are all in the DE. The problem is that some users leave the application running 24 hours a day, and eventually Windows will lock up or they'll have a network or power interruption that causes data corruption errors. Symptoms range from corrupted indexes, jumbled records, to illegal operations in the VFP DLL.

To fix the problem I have to look for corrupted records and delete them, check for effects on relational data, and re-index the table. This is not fun work and the time is not billed. We're currently working on a utility to automate the fix. However, I was wondering if there was something I could do to make VFP tables "more stable".

When customers call with this problem I try to explain to them that database applications are sensetive to "improper shutdowns" since the tables are not properly closed, but their typical response is that the other applications they have are still running, so why is this one so "unstable".

I thought about removing the tables from the DE and manually opening them each time they're needed and immidiately closing them afterwards. This way the tables are closed most of the time and the chances of data corruption are minimized. Implmenting this would be a lot of work. Is there a better way to protect VFP tables from data corruption? Thanks.