Very Computer

PS.  We are implementing Client server, and therefore expect the clients
to do some of the work.  Also, my personal opinion is that PCs are crap,
and we have made a decision to move to workstations, but this will take
awhile, so I have to live with what's thrown at me.

Cheers
Mike :)
--

Michael Krey
British Aviation Insurance Group

No one ever got their work done by Friday, except Robinson Crusoe.

  [PC horror story deleted ]

: Cheers
: Mike :)
: --

  I heard a juicy story from a developer in a PC shop, who told
  me the following;

  In the MS-Windows API, they have a malloc() call. If there isn't
  enough space in memory, the malloc() call returns as much as it
  can, but no error message. The result is that when you walk
  through your brand new block of memory, and you reach the
  end of it, you see;

  "GPF"

  Familiar, anyone?

  Note that I am reporting a story, and I have *no* experience with
  Windows APIs, but enough experience of PC's to be able to
  estimate that my Mean Time to Failure on a PC is about 4 hours.
  If any industrious MS-Windows person out there can correct
  this version of events by providing the appropriate way to
  malloc() memory safely I would be grateful.

  My little DEC workstation has been up for three months now.

 KR
    P"Don't have a cow, Bill."b

When you run out of either of these resources, you will likely get
an 'Out of Memory' error, which can be very misleading.  If you use
a utility (like Norton's System Watch) to track the different types
of memory resources while your application is running, you can find
out exactly which memory is running out.  Also, at the bottom of the
'Help' - 'About Program Manager' screen is a 'System Resources' item.
This number is the lesser of the GDI resources and the USER resources.

Ingres Tech Support suggests opening fewer screens simultaneously.  I
found that an open screen uses resources even if it is not visible.  I
ended up rewriting parts of my application to use 'gotoframe' instead
of 'callframe'.

Sorry about the bad news, hope this helps.

--

Mark Copenhaver                                              (404) 448-7727

Atlanta, GA    USA

Quote:>When you run out of either of these resources, you will likely get
>an 'Out of Memory' error, which can be very misleading.  If you use

Quote:>Ingres Tech Support suggests opening fewer screens simultaneously.  I

Quote:>found that an open screen uses resources even if it is not visible.  I
>ended up rewriting parts of my application to use 'gotoframe' instead
>of 'callframe'.

Quote:>Sorry about the bad news, hope this helps.

PS.  And to think in a year's time we will have to implement Document
Image Processing into W4gl.  The mind boggles  (and so will the memorey
I imagine)
Michael Krey
British Aviation Insurance Group

No one ever got their work done by Friday, except Robinson Crusoe.

The solution to this problem lies in a call to a Windows API function, requesting the number of remaining bytes of system resources. Comparing this number with a calculated number of bytes for the frame, you (or rather the program) can decide that the frame takes too much memory and therefore cannot be opened. The necessary calculations and system calls are easy to implement, so if anyone's interested let me know.

Regarding the management of the swapfile, I personally think that windows4GL has no influence on this. Windows has it's limitations, and one of them is memory.

Roald.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Haagse Hogeschool, sector informatica.
The Netherlands