Microsoft KB Archive/147941

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How to Handle Path Issues When Moving Databases

Article ID: 147941

Article Last Modified on 10/15/2003



APPLIES TO

  • Microsoft Visual FoxPro 3.0 Standard Edition
  • Microsoft Visual FoxPro 6.0 Professional Edition



This article was previously published under Q147941

SUMMARY

When you move an application from one computer to another, and that application uses shared data on a network server, you may experiences problems with the paths. Programmers write their code so that paths are as generic as possible but when the application is moved and the paths are therefore different, it becomes a tremendous inconvenience to re-code the differences in the path information and redistribute the application.

This article explains and demonstrates how to avoid these path-related problems in relation to databases and the database container (DBC).

MORE INFORMATION

A Visual FoxPro database container (.dbc file) stores a relative path to the tables it contains. Therefore, if you move a .dbc file and its .dbf files to a new location, there shouldn't be any problems as long as the relative paths remain the same.

For example, you could move the following files from here:

\prod\data\foo.dbc
\prod\data\tables\bar.dbf
\prod\data\tables\baz.dbf


to here:

\dev\data\foo.dbc
\dev\data\tables\bar.dbf
\dev\data\tables\baz.dbf


without any trouble.

Additionally, if you want to use drive letters to network drives, you can map a new network drive and path to the same drive letter like this:

 net use q: \\prod\data
                

or


 net use q: \\dev\data
                


Additional query words: VFoxWin

Keywords: KB147941