Click above to get retro games delivered to your door ever month!

 New Lock Offset
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

     Problem:  Index locking, which is transparent to the developer, uses a
     single-byte semaphore locking system.  This semaphore was placed at a
     virtual offset (beyond the physical end of file) in the index file.  In
     previous versions of CA-Clipper, this offset was located at one billion
     (1,000,000,000) which was adequate at the time.  But many systems today
     are capable of producing indexes that are large enough to cause the
     actual data present at the lock offset to become physically locked.
     This leads to problems when trying to read or write to the data at that
     offset.

     Solution:  The solution is to move the offset where locking occurs to a
     location at a greater offset.  We have chosen FFFFFFFF hex, which is the
     largest offset possible under the DOS operating system.  The problem
     with this solution is that new applications using the index will be
     locking this new byte while old applications using the same index will
     lock the old position.  Clearly this would cause both applications to
     fail because each could have a lock on the file at the same time.

     To avoid this, the signature of the index (in the index header) is
     modified to prevent pre-CA-Clipper 5.2 applications from being able to
     open the index.  CA-Clipper 5.2 applications can detect the correct
     offset to use by the flag in the header and will automatically use the
     correct one.  In Figure 7-1 below, each bit represents a flag:

        BIT     7   6   5   4   3   2   1   0
        FLAG    R   R   R   O   P   I   I   C

        R  Reserved
        I  Index type - both bits set (NTX)
        C  Index created with a Condition, condition in header
        T  Created as a Temporary index
        O  New Offset for exclusive (semaphore) lock

        Figure 7-1: Bit Field for the Signature Byte
                    of a CA-Clipper 5.2 NTX File

 Activation

     If CA-Clipper 5.2 automatically modified the signature in the header
     when it created indexes, programs with automatic reindexing routines
     would be creating indexes that appeared corrupt to pre-CA-Clipper 5.2
     applications.  This has an obvious problem with backward compatibility.
     Therefore, in order to create indexes with the new signature, the
     developer must link in the module NTXLOCK2.OBJ with the full knowledge
     that this will create indexes that older applications will not be able
     to access.

 Header Changes

     The signature byte of a .NTX file is 6 for an unenhanced NTX index.  The
     inclusion of the NTXLOCK2.OBJ will cause the signature to become 26 hex.
     (6 hex ORed with 20 hex).  See Figure 7-1 for an illustration of all the
     possible values for the signature byte.

 Error Handling

     CA-Clipper 5.2 applications will automatically recognize the signature
     byte of the header, and depending on the signature value, will use the
     correct index lock location.  Applications built with previous versions
     of CA-Clipper, however, do not have the capability to detect the
     optional new information in the signature byte.  Therefore, when an
     order application tries to open a file that has been created with the
     NTXLOCK2.OBJ linked in it will produce a Corruption Detected error.

 Compatibility

     The new locking location, if used, is not backward compatible with
     applications compiled with previous versions of CA-Clipper.

     Indexes created by applications built with a previous version of
     CA-Clipper can be used by CA-Clipper 5.2 using the new location and will
     not be modified unless the index is recreated in application.

     Since older applications have no knowledge of the new index locking
     scheme nor of the significance of the header signature, these
     applications will assume the index is corrupt and will produce an Index
     Corrupted error.