BBS Toolkit/BBS Toolkit.iso/pc_board/udbsv541.zip/READ.ME

Text File | 1992-05-12 | 16KB | 287 lines

                     Changes to UDBS Version 5.41 - May 1992

     1)   The changes to this version of UDBS are mostly cosmetic to make
          the program more up to date. Since taking over full operation of
          the Sailboard in March 92, I have used UDBS more now than I ever
          had in the past as a Co-Sysop. Consequently I got to see some
          things I didn't like, plus some minor bugs, and decided to change
          them.

     2)   Added support to count transfers using the HS/Link protocol. This
          protocol is becoming extremely popular, and it was time to take
          note of it. The counting of HS/Link transfers is being done in
          the field that was previously used (years ago) for Imodem (You'll
          see it on 5.4 and before). What I've done is include a small
          program called ZEROIMOD to wipe out all Imodem counts in your
          data file (I doubt you have many counts on this field, if any!).
          This resets the file field to zero. You should run ZEROIMOD once
          when you install the updated programs. After that you can delete
          it. There is no harm if you don't run it, but if you have any old
          Imodem counts, they will now show as HS/Link on a users record.

     3)   Removed the Overlap checking code in Useact (OVERLAPCHECK=NO).
          The code that performed the check was active even if you told it
          "NO" and on my system it was taking a horrendous amount of time
          to scan 2000 period records. The way I figure it, overlap
          checking is now worthless anyway. Many UDBS sites are multi-node
          and this meant overlap check was off anyway. With the automatic
          extraction utilities included in the basic package, its hard to
          cause an overlapped period. It was also a way to make the program
          a bit smaller and faster. If you have an OVERLAPCHECK=NO
          statement in your UDBS.CFG file, you can remove it since it does
          nothing now.

     4)   High Speed call totals. If you notice in the query reports, I
          break out 9600, 19200, & 38400 speeds separately, and display
          them that way. This is sort of useless since PCBoard writes the
          opening port speed into the callers log, not the modem (connect)
          speed. Therefore on all displays, 9600, 19200, & 38400 will be
          displayed as "9600+" (a total of the 3 speeds).

     5)   REGISTERED USERS: Make sure that your DOORKEY file is in the
          subdirectory pointed to by the FILES= statement in your UDBS.CFG
          file otherwise you'll be told your program isn't registered. If
          you are using the latest version of the door programs, this is
          the only place it needs to be.



                    Changes in UDBS Version 5.40 - April 1991

     1)   Useact now has the ability to process more than one callers log
          file per run. In the past multiple node sites had to run Useact
          once per node to process multiple log sections. The only other
          way was to join multiple callers logs by appending the together
          with copy. This is no longer necessary. The names of multiple
          callers logs are now placed into a text file, and the name of
          that text file is specified on the INPUT= statement with an '@'
          in front of it. So if you placed 4 callers logs filenames in a
          file called MYLOGS, the input specification you would use would
          be INPUT=@MYLOGS. Useact would then process all of the callers
          logs that were specified in MYLOGS in one run. The documentation
          explains this in detail.

     2)   Another random occurrence in the callers log file has been
          causing Useact to 'burp' lately. As long as EVENT is specified in
          your UDBS.CFG file, no problems occur, but the line never the
          less is causing Useact to skip it because of a parsing error so
          it needs to be recognized and remedied. The line I am referring
          to is this:

               03-16-91 (15:08) (1)  (2400) (G) * NEW USER *

          I'm not sure what causes it, but it happens several times a week.
          I think it has something to do with first time callers. In any
          event, if Useact finds a name that has a length of zero, the
          remainder of the record is ignored.

     3)   Several sections of the documentation have been re-written to
          make them easier to understand. I have gotten feedback from
          several users that instructions for setting up UDBS on multiple
          node systems was at best sparse. A new Appendix has been added
          which specifically explains UDBS setup on multiple node systems.

     4)   Support for UDBS is no longer available in an ILINK conference
          specifically dedicated to UDBS. The conference was discontinued
          by ILINK's administration in December 1990 for lack of traffic. I
          can still handle support questions over ILINK's SYSOPS
          conference, but would prefer to handle the support directly on my
          BBS. Conference 4 on the SailBoard is still the UDBS support
          conference. The SailBoard's telephone number is in the
          documentation.

     5)   There are no changes to any of the other programs, the time/date
          stamps are correct on these.


                      Changes in Useact 5.32b - March 1991

          For whatever the reason, PCBoard can occasionally generate user
          names that start with punctuation characters (notably periods
          "."). When this occurs and Useact attempts to process this name,
          it can cause an immediate error in Useact, or errors later on
          when you run Query or Modify. This change only allows names
          starting with A-Z or 0-9 to be processed. Any other first
          character will cause that caller record to be ignored.

                     Changes in Useact 5.32 - February 1991

          This change came about from a bug in another authors door
          program. The bug that this door had was that, under the right
          circumstances, it wrote the "Time On:" when the person logged off
          from the door as approximately 59,000 minutes. When Useact tried
          to parse this line it caused an Error 6 (Overflow) since the
          variable that was to receive the time was an integer (only having
          a range of 0-32767). When the error occurred Useact would end
          abnormally and the log would not be processed. The fix made to
          Useact 5.32 is to check the time used amount on each call record.
          If it is greater than 1440 minutes (24 hours), it will be
          disregarded


                   Changes in UDBS version 5.30 - August 1990

     1)   Well, the inevitable happened. A bug that has long been dormant
          in Useact was finally triggered by a change in the Callers log.
          CDC added an extra space in the callers log after the name of a
          transferred file. This caused file names of downloads to parse
          out as 13 characters (12 + 1 space). The bug was in the Indexing
          package (written by another author). The length of the KEY (file
          names) for transfers has always been 12 characters. When a 13
          character string was passed into the indexer, it didn't clip to
          12 characters. Hence the indexer returned a "not found" on a
          lookup that did in fact exist. This caused Useact to improperly
          add a new download entry. Unfortunately, since this entry already
          existed, the new one was not referenced (or unreachable). The
          symptom was that "who download a file" didn't report all
          downloads on that file. This also cluttered up the Download.Nam
          file with redundant entries. Useact 5.30 prevents this problem by
          limiting the length to 12 and stripping spaces.

     2)   A repair utility caller REPAIRDL.EXE is included to undo the
          damage caused by the bug. This will reassemble the scattered
          transfers to where they should have been originally. It will also
          remove the redundant entries and rebuild the index file.
          Instructions for how to use it are found in REPAIRDL.DOC.
          Unfortunately trying to support a product that never seems to be
          in a production state (always in beta) is becoming more of a
          problem. Things change too often, and as in this case, it is
          months before the side effect is seen. I try my best to keep up
          with these changes, but I'm at a disadvantage in that everyone
          rushes headlong into the latest software before any
          incompatibilities can be spotted. You should assume that this
          could, and probably will, happen again. The next time there might
          not be a solution for it. Protect yourself, keep good backups and
          hold on to your logs during these beta cycles.

                     Changes in UDBS version 5.25 - May 1990

     1)   There have no major changes to speak of in this version. The only
          changes were made to USEACT to make it compatible with PCBoard
          version 14.5. There have been several minor changes made to the
          callers log in PCB 14.5, the first being the addition of the
          "ANSI" mode. This places a (A) on the first line of a callers
          record. UDBS counts this as a non-graphic call. The other change
          to the callers log affects ONLY single node sites. In PCB 14.5
          the callers name was moved one character to the left, this causes
          Useact 5.2, 5.21, & 5.22 to incorrectly parse the users name. In
          fact NEW data records are created in the data base since for
          example "PETE SMITH" is a different name than "ETE SMITH". If you
          obtain this version before running 14.5 you will have no problem.
          If you obtain this version AFTER starting to use 14.5 and you
          have created oddball user records as noted above, there is a VERY
          simple fix for this. Use the "Merge Data Records" function in
          Modify to merge the bad records into the ones they belong. Using
          the above example you would merge "ETE SMITH" into "PETE SMITH".
          Merge will automatically remove "ETE SMITH" from the files. Do
          this for as many bad records as you might have created.


                     Changes in UDBS version 5.2 - July 1989


     1)   USEACT is now fully text configurable, and may be used with other
          languages besides English. All scanning text has been placed into
          external text file(s) that may be changed by the Sysop to match
          any changes made to PCBTEXT. In addition, more than one text file
          may be specified allowing for multiple language operation. A new
          chapter entitled "Text and Language Configuration" has been added
          to the documentation. You should read this chapter before
          upgrading. You will also need to make additions to your UDBS.CFG
          file. A text file containing all standard English entries to
          PCBTEXT is provided, this is what was hard coded in Useact as of
          release 5.1 and is ready to use for most sites. A stand alone
          program is available from me to registered users to assist in
          creating alternate text files from PCBTEXT (for those with
          customized PCBTEXT's or foreign language PCBTEXT's). The program
          reads only the records from PCBTEXT (version 14.x) that it needs
          and creates a UDBS text file. You then make minor alterations to
          the output file and you're ready to go.

     2)   A new function has been added to the Modify program. You now have
          the ability to merge two data records. This can be used if a
          current user in your database changes his name (such as going
          from handle to a real name). You can merge the information from
          the handle name into the real name. See the documentation for
          more information on this.

     3)   A new function has been added to the "Reset Bulletin Flags"
          operation in Modify. You may now reset a bulletin flag for a
          single user as well as globally reset bulletin flags. You would
          reset a flag for a single user if you wanted to see if that user
          re-read a specific bulletin.

     These three changes were made at user requests. Thanks to those that
     suggested them.

     No changes have occurred in the utility programs, the door programs,
     Query.Exe, or Sync.Exe since the release of 5.1

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

                     Changes in UDBS version 5.1 - May 1989


     1)   Added support for 38400k baud. (Captures counts, displays, and
          doors will now operate at 38400.)

     2)   Found a minor bug that would prevent the last record in some
          databases from being read or scanned. This was corrected in the
          following areas:

               In Query:

                    B - Users Who Never Download
                    C - Users Who Never Upload
                    L - Users Exceeding DL/UL Ratio
                    T - Sub menu B - Display New Users for a Given Month
                    U - Scan For User Name

               In Modify:

                    B - Delete If Not In Users File
                    C - Purify (User/download/upload)
                    D - Undelete
                    I - Database Size Info
                    K - Subscriptions (Sub Menu Scan)
                    L - Comment (Sub Menu Scan)
                    M - Rebuild Index Files
                    N - Reset Bulletin Flags

               In Expsub Utility:

                    Last record in database not checked.

               In Cmtutil utility:

                    Last User record in database would not have comments
                    added to it.

     3)   Additionally most of the programs and utilities have had some
          minor code changes to consolidate routines and procedures.

     4)   Both doors have been updated to include the 38400 baud count in
          the 9600+ field. The doors have also had some rework done to them
          to make them compatible with PCBoard 14.1 Specifically they can
          now operate at 38400 baud. The doors no longer use the built in
          functions from QuickBASIC to handle the serial I/O. I have
          written my own serial I/O routines using C. The screen I/O is now
          also done using C. This change was done to solve some nasty
          problems that certain networks had with my original screen
          routines.

     5)   Documentation changes were made.

     6)   The conversion routines CONVDL & CONVUL have been removed from
          distribution. It is assumed that by now everyone has converted
          from version 4 to version 5 that needs to do so. These programs
          are still available if anybody should need them. They will be
          posted on the SailBoard.

     7)   Support for the User Database System is now available on the
          INTERLINK mail Network. An Interlink system near you should be
          carrying this conference. If not, the nearest Regional Host will
          have it. You should regularly check this conference for news
          about changes and fixes. All updates and registered programs are
          now available on the Sailboard. 201-831-8152