Debugging:

[egiblock]

i'm just looking into debugging .p files from syteline, and i grabbed one as an example.

i don't have syteline installed on my machine, but i copied the .p files to my machine and opened it in a debugger

the error:
** Could not understand line 406 (196)

the code it errors on:
def INPUT PARAMETER f-revision like item.revision.


the file was cp-j.p


Progress Procedure Editor
Version 9.1B28



Current Server Information:
--------------------------
Syteline 5.02.10
Progress 9.1b27
Windows 2000 Server SP4
--------------------------

 

[TomBascom]

Are you connected to a database? (The LIKE keyword needs a database connection to be resolved by the compiler...)

9.1B is ancient, obsolete and unsupported. There is a completely new and much better, like night and day better, debugger in a late 9.1D service pack. And, of course, the Eclipse IDE includes an even better debugger with OpenEdge 10. If you are serious about using a debugger you shouldn't be wasting any time on the 9.1B debugger.

 

[egiblock]

I understand about the age of it, and honestly I am stuck there for now. The users are content with it, and to put the through 6 months of testing would be more of a pain if anything because the current system is working fine.

I was just asking for help of debugging it.

And since I have to have a connection to the db, how can I do that from my machine? Do I have to have syteline installed, or should I just install progress and copy the database over for testing ?

 

[TomBascom]

It's hard to remember how to use something that old and broken

But it sounds like you are debugging in a test mode. In that case I would want a stand-alone install of Progress and Symix and a copy of the target db. I wouldn't want to be debugging against the production environment.

As for "6 months of testing"... No, it's more like a week or two at most. And if the users are happy with what they have they'd be ecstatic to have the benefits of something more up to date. If your maintenance is paid up an upgrade to 9.1E is basically just a patch release. It is little different than getting the latest bug fixes for Windows. Are they still running Windows 98 on their desktops?

Going to OpenEdge 10 is a bit more exciting but not a lot more.

Once you're upgraded there are many, many new features that you can take advantage of -- upgrading only makes them available, it doesn't change anything about the exisiting application or configuration.

 

[egiblock]

how does the upgrade work with custom menu's, reports, etc ? and do you know if there is a change in the table structures of the database at all ?

 

[TomBascom]

You should be able to upgrade from 9.1B all the way to 9.1E04 simply by applying the upgrades from Progress.

Upgrading Progress makes no changes at all to the application. Old stuff keeps working in the old way. New features are available but not forced on you.

To go any further or to take advantage of some new features you will need to be able to compile code (most, if not all, Syteline customers can). If you can do that then there is basically nothing, other than FUD, stopping you from going all the way to OpenEdge 10.2 (or whatever is current when you get around to upgrading).

Obviously you should test things -- but 99.44% of the time there are no issues at all. And on those rare occasions when someone screws something up it is pretty easy to straighten it out.