>I have just recently converted a 10 year old FoxDOS program to VFP 6SP3. At this point approximately 400 users have converted over. Two very disconcerting things are happening. 1. Records are disappearing from files. 2. Primary Keys are being violated - that is, duplicate key fields are appearing in tables and the primary key index is being dropped.
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>As to 1, I understand that the culprit is an incorrect record counter in the file header resulting in records being overwritten when new records are appended. This did happen in DOS from time to time but not with nearly the frequency it is happening now. As to 2, I did not think it was possible to insert a duplicate record into a key field. When this happens any screen using this table refuses to open which effectively shuts the program down.
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>Two Questions - 1. Is the VFP file system stable? and 2. If it is, then why is this happening to me? By the way, I am running StoneField Database 5.1i and in my newest compile I am running FoxFix 5.0 in the background at startup to check file headers. I do not know if this is going to fix the problem.

Calvin,

I can (about :) guarantee you that there is no difference in the FPD and VFP file system as long as the same command set is used in both. Of course when you use Seek's in FPD and SQL in VFP all becomes different, because SQL works out things differently. Now since you're using Stonefield (and SQL) now, what to say ...

Please note that I can guarantee things as I do, because of the experience of converting a FPD 2.5 app to VFP5, where obviously all has changed (to events, objects etc.), but nothing has been done on the file system. So, Seek's etc. remained exactly as they were;
All properly working things remained properly working, and ... all badly working things remained badly working in to the detail. There are a few differences, derived from the being full 32 bit in VFP, which is partly 16 in FPD's file system. However, this doesn't cause extra problems, and merely "postpones" problems from FPD's file system to the time a larger number of records / keys / bytes (really, there are some bugs which work out like that).

When it's not Stonefield causing it (and it's not your own bad-coding ;) please keep in mind that you may have changed other things implicitly, like the PC's OS, the number of tables used (limited variously per PC OS (' version !)), and my general idea : don't use Novell but use NT-server. This latter BTW accounts for FPD as VFP just the same. Use Novell anyway ? then use a MS clieny for it.

Last thing : your problems may be found in the locking-strategy, which will (assumed) be different and may be not "decent". Now note that this all *has* to to with Flush etc. (see other messages) indeed.

I say it will be too difficult to work this out in theory, but you may be helped with my statement : FPD and VFP is the same when the same command set is used (which sadly won't be the case here).