By Barry Rochford
I designed a pretty large application for a client in the Food Service Business. It handles Catering, Patient Information, Dietary Assessment, Recipes & Menus. My client has installed this application in longterm care facilities in Northern New Jersey, Maryland, Pennsylvania and I believe Virginia so far. I don’t really know how many Installations are using it.
When I make an update, the client is responsible for getting it installed. The bugaboo is, if someone has a problem, unless I know exactly what version they are using, I'm not sure how to diagnose and fix the problem.
Finally EUREKA! Well, I didn’t jump out of my bathtub, but problem solved! Lots of software houses, including Alpha Software, track different releases by recording the “Build”. I decided to implement that method also.
Every application I write has a "START" table, I use this table to save site-specific information such as license number, site name, etc. I added a new field to my “START” table, Version, defined as Character type, Length of 20. I changed the Main Menu form to display this field in the lower right corner. Now, when sending an update, I change the Version field in the Start.dbf to “Ver 2.0 Build 15” (for example) & include it when putting together the ZIP file. In addition I send along an MSWord Document detailing which files are being sent and what changes are included. Another ancillary benefit is that I now have a detailed record of exactly what changes were completed, when they were done, and exactly which files were included in the Zip file sent to my Client.
Figure 1 – Sample Main Menu showing Version & Build in the Lower Right corner.
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Barry is an Alpha Developer living close to Newtown, PA, just a stone's throw from where Washington crossed the Delaware. He can be reached at brochford@enter.net
7/1/00
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