UPDATE REQUIREMENTS

Updating to 3.70

RECOMPILING/RE-INDEXING REQUIREMENTS

This section is designed to provide you with a complete list of the issues you should consider when updating from a revious release of Business Rules!. To use it, find the heading that applies to the Business Rules! system you are updating from; unless otherwise stated, all numbered items that follow (including those headed by later release numbers) will identify the changes that impact your update.

Please note: Once a program has been recompiled under 3.50+ releases, the object will not be compatible with revious releases of Business Rules! unless they are reloaded from source and saved under the previous release again. Even if your programs saved under release 3.50 do not contain any of the other new features from release 3.50, they still will not be able to run under previous releases of Business Rules! until they are reloaded from source. See the program SEARCH3, available on the Supplemental Programs diskette, for an automated process for reloading programs from source.

From release prior to 3.52:

  1. If you intend to change programs compiled prior to this release, perhaps while performing on-line support, then we suggest that you reload all programs from source, using your target (new) release of WB.
  2. Address the reserved words that were introduced in release 3.53. See "Reserved words" in the Important Changes to Note section of this section. (Note that if your programs use an open-ended THEN or ELSE on an ELSE clause (such as IF X THEN A=10 ELSE IF Y THEN), you will need to change them before recompiling from source. Starting in release 3.65c, this usage produces error 1121.)

You must also complete all numbered items listed under the headings below, except you can skip steps 4, 5 and 7.

From releases 3.52-3.53x:

  1. If you wish to take advantage of B-tree indexing, re-index all index files (note that starting with release 3.61, B-tree indexing becomes the default once you re-index UNLESS you use OPTION 5 in your wbconfig.sys, in which case ISAM remains the default).

Also complete all remaining numbered items listed under the headings below.

From releases 3.60-3.60m:

  1. REPLACE all B-tree indexes. (ISAM indexes do not need to be replaced.)

Also complete all remaining numbered items listed under the headings below.

From releases 3.60n-3.61a:

  1. If your programs use OPTION BASE 0 and reference array element zero, you should load them from source and resave them.

Also complete all remaining numbered items listed under the headings below.

From release 3.61b

  1. If your programs rely on the field plus and field minus keys returning an FKEY value of 104, you will need to change them. Starting in release 3.65, field plus returns 114 and field minus returns 115.

Also complete all remaining numbered items listed under the headings below.

From 3.65-3.65b

  1. If your programs use an open-ended THEN or ELSE on an ELSE clause (such as IF X THEN A=10 ELSE IF Y THEN), you will need to change them before recompiling from source. Starting in release 3.65c, this usage produces error 1121.

Also complete all remaining numbered items listed under the headings below.

From 3.65c-3.65e

  1. Business Rules! now generates an error when '*' or '?' are used in the file name or when the file name starts with a period (.) but these usages are invalid. If your applications employ this usage, you will need to change them.

Also complete all remaining numbered items listed under the headings below.

From 3.67

  1. DOS users: Make sure that you are running on DOS release 3.3 or greater.
  2. DOS users: If your programs were testing the EXISTS function for a particular value (rather than zero or non-zero), you should confirm that they will continue to operate correctly with the 3.66 release. EXISTS now returns a 1 for directories and a number greater than 1 for files.
  3. Support for HELP STATUS and HELP FILES has been removed. If your applications use these commands, you must change them to use the STATUS and STATUS FILES commands instead.
  4. The operation of LIST and MERGE has been changed for situations where a single line number is specified and redirection to a file name is used (now only the specified line is redirected, where previously the specified line to the end of the file was redirected). If your applications employ this usage, they will need to be modified to achieve the same results.



IMPORTANT CHANGES TO NOTE

This section will describe the major enhancements and changes included in the releases. The release number next to each change indicates the minimum release you need to have to take advantage of the change.

Control characters not allowed for INPUT Release 3.30
On Unix, Xenix, and AIX versions, control characters are no longer allowed as valid input for INPUT statements. See "Control characters" in the Keys section in this appendix for more information.

DOS 3.3+ now required Release 3.70
DOS versions of Business Rules! now require an operating system release of 3.3 or greater to run.

ERR Release 3.70
Commands entered from the keyboard will no longer set this variable.

ERROR 1032 Release 3.53
If you get a error 1032 on a DIM statement, check for use of one of the added system functions: PROGRAM$, ARIABLE$, VERSION, LINES, LINESPP, CONFIG$. There is a utility program available called WBSREP which will search and change variables of any name. See "WBSREP" in the Other Changes/Enhancements section of this document for more information.

EXISTS function Release 3.70
EXISTS now returns a 1 for directories and a number greater than 1 for files. If your programs are testing the EXISTS function for a particular value (rather than zero or non-zero), you should confirm that they will continue to operate correctly with 3.65c+ releases. This change could affect existing applications.

GOTO, GOSUB from command line Release 3.53
Command-line execution of GOTO and GOSUB will no longer be allowed. This change was made because memory problems were resulting when an error was generated by the requested operation. Error 1011 (Illegal immediate statement) will now occur when such usage is attempted.

HELP STATUS/HELP FILES commands Release 3.70
The HELP STATUS and HELP FILES commands are no longer supported. You must now use STATUS instead. This change could affect existing applications.

LIST command Release 3.70
LIST with a single line number and redirection to a file name now causes only the specified line to be redirected. Previously all lines from the line specified to the end of the program were redirected. This change could affect existing applications.

MERGE command Release 3.70
MERGE with a program name and a line number now causes only the specified line to be merged. Previously all lines from the line specified to the end of the program were merged. This change could affect existing applications.


Release 3.70 is "Bridge" to future releases Release 3.70
It is important to note that Business Rules! release 3.70 will act as a bridge version between releases prior to 3.70 and the next major release after 3.70 (e.g. 3.80). The next major release will not work with programs saved prior to release 3.70. However, release 3.70 will run all prior version 3.x programs, and the next major release will work with programs saved under 3.70.

Reserved words Release 3.53
The following are additional reserved words in Business Rules!: PROGRAM$, VARIABLE$, VERSION, LINES, LINESPP, CONFIG$. Error 1032 will occur on any DIM statement that uses a reserved word as a variable name. See "WBSREP" in the Other Changes/Enhancements section for information on how to quickly search and replace reserved words in your programs.

SYSTEM Release 3.53
Upon re-entry after a DOS shell call, Business Rules! will now switch back to the directory that was current at the time of the temporary system exit. (Unix/Xenix versions of Business Rules! already had this feature.) This could affect existing programs.

Note for DOS On-Q users: Due to the SYSTEM change noted above, the command SYS ONQ will find On-Q only if: 1) On-Q is in the same directory as Business Rules!, or 2) PATH identifies the On-Q directory, the On-Q environment variable IQDD identifies the data dictionary directory, and the On-Q environment variable IQDATA identifies the base directory of the data files to be accessed.

SCO Unix vs. SCO Xenix Release 3.53
Due to an incompatibility problem between the SCO Unix and SCO Xenix 386 operating systems, Business Rules! releases 3.52 and greater have been released in two different versions. It is very important that you use the correct version for your operating system. Using the SCO Unix version on an SCO Xenix 386 system (or vice versa) will result in serious memory problems. This restriction does not apply to On-Q.