PL/B Companion

ver 4.00

PL/B Companion (formerly DATABUS Companion) assists Sunbelt Computer Systems' SUNDB86x programmers by providing additional tools and information for writing, testing, and debugging PL/B (DATABUS) applications. Included are the following utilities written entirely in PL/B using the SUNDB86M compiler:

ISIcheck: Validates ISAM index against text data file. Reports mismatches in keys, deleted records, etc. Ver 4 uses key specs placed in header by INDEX.

AAMexam: Analyzes AAM index. Used to understand AAM & to optimize AAM applications. Ver 4 supports ver 1 (63 Short) and ver 2 (95 long).

pcDATAcheck: Analyzes text file. Record lengths, non-ASCII characters, end-of-file, etc. View, Search & Modify any file.

DBhelp: Learning & testing tool for PL/B instructions. Shows results & flag settings for many instructions

-- UTILITY ADDED in ver 4.0 --

AAMconv: Quickly reformats ver 1 AAM file to ver 2 format. Provided as source code for customization

ISIcheck

ISIcheck is a utility program that verifies accuracy of ISAM indexes and assists programmers in testing and debugging PL/B programs. It is not de signed to test Sunbelt's ISAM package, although it can report some internal ISAM errors. ISIcheck will:

Check all deleted entries to make sure they point to deleted TXT "records".

Check all keys in the ISI against the text data.

Check each primary record for one and only one key in the ISI file.

Check for pointers that point outside the TXT file.

Check for pointers to partially deleted TXT records.

Log all results to a printer or a log file

Can be used to observe each ISI key in the file as well as to report errors.

Detect errors that might otherwise lie dormant until ??????

It is particularly useful in checking mulitple indexes and those involving complex keys consisting of many segments. As a tool for remote support, it allows programmers to verify accuracy or corruption of ISAM indexes at another site. Reindexing everything might "fix" a problem temporarily but what about next time? It can be included in BAT files for regularly scheduled verification of each ISI file and can log all its results to a log file. If an error is discovered, an ERROR LEVEL is set to allow decisions within batch processing.

ISIcheck does not use any ISAM routines. It uses information in the ISI file to access the text file directly and is therefore functional only on Sunbelt's v7+ ISAM package.

AAMexam

AAMexam is a utility to analyze AAM indexes with the goal of helping the programmer to understand AAM and to optimize AAM applications which require improved performance. It is the first utility on the market to give the programmer the ability to measure the affects of various AAM parameters and to correlate those to performance.

The basic premise of AAM is that in order for a record to contain the desired search keys, it must contain ALL of the triplets generated by those search keys; alternately any record that does not contain all of those triplets can not possibly contain those search keys.

An AAM READ begins by converting the search keys into triplets and then into hash values. Using the AAM index, it then creates a list of all text records which contain those hash values and thus can contain the search keys. With very large indexes or with slow PCs an analysis which was saved by AAMexam can save the time of having to re-analyze the index.

pcDATAcheck

Knowing the exact format and content of PC files is crucial to PL/B programmers because of the importance placed on fixed vs variable length records, space compression, deleted records, the type and location of the End-of-File, accessibility of all 256 ASCII characters, and the interchange of data between many different packages (dBase, Lotus, W/P. pcDATAcheck quickly checks data/text files for:

Record Lengths - Min/Max (Fixed/Variable)

End-of-Files - Logical/Physical, Valid/Invalid

TABs - Space Compression

NULs - Deleted Records/Characters

Non-ASCII Characters (i.e., characters other than data or controls)

Extra LFs, Extra CRs, FFs, BSs, DELs, etc.

View, search, and modifying any type of file.

pcDATAcheck not only checks files quickly, it allows a wide variety of record selection options (rec ord length and/or content) and gives several options for output (display/printer/logfile) and reporting (simple count, detail reporting by record/location, record extraction, or interactive review/modify). pcDATAcheck is invaluable in testing and debugging standard PL/B applications. No other PC utility provides these capabilities.

DBhelp

DBhelp is a testing/learning tool for Sunbelt's SUNDB86x PL/B, useful to programmers just learning PL/B and experienced PL/B programmers who want to learn new instructions or experiment with unusual or seldom used coding techniques.

You can use DBhelp to test PL/B character string, form numeric, & integer numeric instructions without having to write "quickie" test programs.

PL/B Companion ver 4.00 $149.00 US

For more information or to order a copy, contact
PROCON SYSTEMS
5959 Westheimer #135,
Houston, TX 77057 USA,
(713)783-5171

or order through
B4-U-BUY or Sunbelt Computer Systems.

For comments to B4-U-BUY not pertaining to specific information on this page, click here