Hi Scott,

Thanks for picking up on this. We are approaching the development in two stages. Firstly we are adapting the existing functionality of our matchIT product to allow it to be specifically tailored for GoldMine users who may not have as much technical knowledge of databases, but have a problem with duplicates in their database. This is above and beyond the existing functionality as we are using advanced phonetic matching techniques to pull out duplicates, evaluating how good the matches are and then giving the user the ability to mark records as duplicates by scoring.

As I mentioned earlier we are currently using a stand alone VFP app which calls GoldMine, but in future we are developing our own matching API to plug directly in so no need for the VFP app. We are also offering the product for ACT! and are trying to identify other systems where we can expand this type of functionality.

Back to the current problem. The code which causes the problem is as follows :


=display(1,2, "Importing Goldmine data..." )

m.lChannel = DDEInitiate("GoldMine", "Data")

m.sWorkArea = DDERequest(m.lChannel, "[Open(Contact1)]")
#IF empty(m.sWorkArea)
=MessageBox("Problem with accessing Goldmine database - please ensure that Goldmine is running before starting matchIT Contact", 0+16, "Goldmine Error")
on shutdown
quit
#ENDIF

m.sRet = DDERequest(m.lChannel, "[Move(" + sWorkArea + ",Top)]")

Following this is the DDE requests to pull out the data into a working DBF file to allow the app to match the data. It's the DDEinitiate call which causes the error if GoldMine isn't running. As you can see we have put in a messagebox to try and steer the user to open GoldMine, but the initial error looks a bit ugly and would like to trap this in some way.

Be interested to hear if you have any ideas and would be interested to hear how you are developing GoldMine solutions. Please feel free to contact me by Email directly.

Thanks for showing interest, and I look forward to hearing you thoughts,

Kind Regards,

Simon Swan