Tip, July 2000

Using "Manage Textbases > Recover Textbase" to fix problems in textbases
[Completely revised August 2007]

Introduction

Textbase recovery is sometimes necessary due to errors that have appeared in the textbase indexes or elsewhere. You can use this procedure if advised to "Dump and Reload" after a Check Textbase operation, or if you suspect problems in the textbase.

If you encounter an error message that tells you that a textbase is in an inconsistent state, you should certainly use the Recover Textbase operation.

Hints

Before you begin, post deferred updates in the original textbase and/or export them to a file (Maintain > Deferred Updates). The Dump Textbase and Recover Textbase commands ignore any deferred updates. (If you do not use deferred indexing, you will not need to post deferred updates: the Deferred Updates command will be greyed out.)

If you have enough space on your hard disk, you can use the Recover Textbase operation to perform a single-step recovery of your textbase. To run this operation, you will need about three times as much empty space as is currently occupied by the textbase you are recovering, on the same hard disk as the one holding that textbase. These days it is very rarely the case that a computer does not have enough disk space to run the Recover Textbase operation successfully.

If the textbase is large and resides on a network drive, copy the textbase to a local hard drive with sufficient space before using Recover Textbase. Then copy the textbase back to the network drive when the operation is complete. This will significantly decrease network traffic and improve performance.

How to run the Recover Textbase operation

Before you can run Recover Textbase, you need to know the name of your textbase as well as the details of the folder in which it is located. If you need to find out this information, the easiest method is as follows:

Open the textbase in question.

Click on Display > Textbase Information.

In the Textbase Information dialogue that opens, look for the line that begins “Textbase: ” – this line tells you the name of the textbase and its exact location.

For example, if the line reads as follows...

Textbase: C:\Library\Databases\LOANS

... the textbase is called LOANS and it is located in the folder called C:\Library\Databases.

Once you know the name and location of the textbase, you can run the Recover Textbase operation. To run Recover Textbase, open DB/TextWorks but do not open any of your textbases. That is, you must be either in a DB/TextWorks menu screen or in an empty screen.

If you have a textbase open, your title bar will look something like this:

In this illustration, CATALOG is the textbase name. If you see a textbase name in the title bar of your DB/TextWorks software, simply click File > Close to close the textbase. This will mean you have DB/TextWorks open without being in a textbase, and you are ready to run the Recover Textbase operation.

Now click on Manage Textbases > Recover Textbase. Simply use the Recover Inmagic DB/TextWorks Database dialogue to navigate to the relevant folder, select the relevant textbase, and click the Open button, as shown:

The next dialogue that opens will tell you how much disk space is required for the Recover Textbase operation and how much space you have on your computer or server. If there is enough space, click Yes and the textbase recovery will start:

The operation may take a few seconds or a few minutes, depending on factors such as your network speed and the size of the textbase. At the end of the operation you will see a dialogue that confirms that the recovered textbase has been loaded and that all of your records have been added successfully. You should also see that no records have been rejected and none have been replaced. If DB/TextWorks tells you that records have been rejected or replaced, you may need to contact Maxus for advice.

Now your textbase has been recovered and you can resume work in it. It is very unlikely that any corruptions or inconsistencies remain in the textbase.

A note about the textbase naming convention used by the Recover Textbase operation

When the operation is completed, your old textbase will still exist, with a new backup name. For example if your textbase name is LOANS, after the Recover Textbase procedure you will usually find that you have a NEW, clean textbase called LOANS (the one created by the recovery) and an old one called LOANS1. (The completion message tells you the name used for the old textbase, as shown in the following screenshot.)