January 7, 2000

Many thanks to Curtis Cameron for his fine work with DBCHECK. I have used it to find problems lurking in several files that appear to work just fine (for now).

While the documentation for DBCHECK helps to understand what is wrong inside the database files, there is no recommendation for how to repair the errors it finds.

This is a description of what has worked for me in repairing a number of .ADB files (not all of them - we'll return to that soon) that all held errors.

The tools I have employed:

• DBCHECK V1.73
• Garlic V1.1
• HP 200LX Connectivity Pack Version 1.02

Using DBCHECK, I identified all the files with errors and then copied them to a new directory for experimentation.

By itself, Garlic was unable to completely eliminate the errors reported, and the HP Connectivity Pack couldn't do it all by itself, but in sequence, they fixed almost everything.

First I used Garlic to create a new Appointment Book Database file, like this:

garlic /d 1996_apt.adb 1996_.adb > 1996_gar.log

Next, with the Connectivity Kit, I used the Xlate/Merge utility to create a translation from .ADB format to .ADB format. Yes, that's right, the input format is the same as the output format. When it's asked to do this for a .GDB file, it complains that the formats are identical, but it just goes right ahead and does it for .ADB files.

No special mapping was necessary, so I just let it run and the final product of these two steps was (usually) a new, error-free .ADB file, as confirmed by DBCHECK.

There was one exception -- my 1998_apt.adb file has continued to report, "Error - data record 329 not found in recurring list." It may take some additional work to nail this single remaining fault, but I feel better now about most of my files.

Alan