Revision History

Current Version 0.19

Version 0.15

General Appearance

Scaling

We are switching over to a different "scaling" panel. This should improve the appearance of most forms as well as increasing the speed at which forms appear.

Final fix for the dreaded Stack Overflow Crash

The cause

While working on file import "outside" of Member View, the mysterious "Stack Overflow" bug reappeared. This time showing unhelpful error messages from the operating system, and then locking up the machine entirely. This is what caused the index corruption that lead to the above index code fix. The problem has finally been traced to a setting in the Delphi Linker options that sets the stack space that is available under various circumstances. This was a little unexpected as Delphi is usually good about trapping problems with at least somewhat useful error messages. No error message on this one from Delphi, however, just a big crash! We believe that the stack problem was exacerbated by having all of the diagnostic options of the compiler and linker set "on". We do not believe that this is a problem in the released version 0.15.

To prevent even the possibility of this problem occurring, the stack space has been increased.

Install/Upgrade program

Text files

Except for "Readme.txt", text file versions of the documents have been removed. Please delete all other text documents and remove them from the program group with the exception of "Readme.Txt" as they will no longer be updated. If you do not have Microsoft Word or a word processing program that will read MS Word documents simply use the "send to" Windows 95 command to direct the file to "Quickview".

Database Tables

Any new database tables, other than system tables that come pre-loaded with information (i.e. Regions.db, the CSI Qstore data base files, etc.) will no longer be supplied as a part of the installation. If new tables are required, they can be created in a new or existing installation by running the Create DB or Repair Indexes functions from the Database Maintenance Dialog. We will advise you if you need to run a create or repair maintenance function in order to create new tables or indexes. You will not have to create tables for V0.15 of Member View unless you are upgrading from V0.13 or earlier. If you are upgrading from V0.13, you need to run either of these functions with your current data base selected as the target. These functions will not effect any data that may be present in a pre-existing database.

New document

A new document "FAQ.DOC" has been added. This file contains step by step instructions for common function as well as answers to more Frequently Asked Questions.

Database Maintenance

Create Database

The create database function is implemented. The ability to define new database alias from within Member View has also been implemented.

Repair Indexes

You can now repair "out of date" or "corrupted " indexes from within Member View. Indexes can be damaged if the power is switched off or fails while a database is open, or in the case of an abnormal termination of the program.

People View

Region filtering

The operation of the region filter button has been changed. Previously, another query would deselect the region filter and you had to right click on the button to re-apply the filter. In this version, when the button is "down" the data is always filtered by region, there is no need to re-apply the filter each time.

New mailing assignment function

Sometimes when a person’s membership status and/or address changes, a member mailing will be erroneously removed from a mailing list. To correct this, a new function has been implemented that will check to insure that a selected mailing goes to every address where a member resides. After reading in new national data, or anytime you would like to make sure that each address where a member resides receives a mailing, press the "Mail Members" button on the located on the "Mailings" tab.

Web URL address editing

The editing function of the "Web" tab page did not work. This has been fixed.

National file reading

Reading a data file

The national file reading dialog now includes checkboxes to enable/disable interactive editing of the data if differences are encountered.

New "Read" button

A "Read" button has been added to the dialog that when clicked, will start the operation, this is in addition to the double click on the file name method of starting the read.

Check for missing members

The infrequent but serious bug in the check missing members function has been fixed.

Report writer

Abort button

An "Abort" button has been added to the report dialog box.

Membership Comprehensive New Report

The "Membership Comprehensive" report is implemented. This is the long deferred "report everything" report

Export module

Abort button

An "Abort" button has been added to the export dialog box.

Editor choice functions

The editor choice functions are now fully operational in the export dialog box. The controls work the same way as those in the report writer dialog box.

Version 0.14 05/16/97

National file reading

Missing members check

Members who transfer to another region or become deceased are dropped from the active file(s) obtained from National. After reading in an active file set, the user is prompted to run a check for these missing members. If any are found, a window is presented that allows the removal of selected members from mailing lists, the membership status to be changed (choices are active, dropped and unknown) or another region to be chosen. This function requires a new table that is installed by default by the upgrade program.

Suppression of address and phone number checking

Check boxes are now provided in the national reader dialog that enable/disable checking of address and phone numbers when reading national data files. If checking is disabled, then the default behavior is to replace the existing record without user intervention. if multiple addresses or phone numbers are associated with the member, a choice dialog is displayed. The user verification of name and membership data changes (other than change of status or dues payment) cannot be disabled.

Interactive change dialogs modified

The address and telephone interactive change dialogs have been slightly modified. The underlying code has been substantially rewritten.

Telephone numbers updating method changed

New telephone numbers are now handled in the same way as new addresses. A new record is generated the first time a new address or phone number for an existing member is read, and subsequent members who share the same address or phone number are then linked to the new record. When there are no more links to the old number or address, notification is given to the user and the old record is disabled. The old behavior was to ask the user if the number or address should be deleted. In order to prevent orphan records, this choice has been eliminated.

Skipped last record in edited and saved national data files

If a national file was edited, an extraneous end of file mark may have been inserted by the editing program. The end of file detection software in Delphi will give an attempt to read beyond end of file error if this marker is encountered. The logic in Member View assumed in these cases that whatever was just read was invalid and skipped the processing of the line. This turns out not to be the case, and thus the last valid record in these files was skipped. Unless you have edited national data files (a practice we strongly advise against) this situation will never occur on your system. In any event, the logic has been corrected.

People View

Status change

The status display field has been changed to a drop down combo box. The color of the box depends upon the status: white for unknown, green for active and red for dropped.

Mailings tab page batch operations

There is a new option for the mailings tab page batch operation that when activated, causes the user to be solicited for an address choice for a mailing if and only if there is more than one address associated with the person.

Mailings View

"And" function in mailing lists sometimes missed records

On rare occasions when the "And" option was enabled and more than one mailing list was selected, not all of the distinct mailing list items were reported. This occurred when a person was assigned to more than one mailing and the addresses differed from one another. The algorithm has been changed to eliminate the problem. The change requires a new system temporary table, "PersMaiT.db" and "PersMaiT.px" . These tables are installed by the upgrade program.

Delete function in mailing lists sometimes failed

There was an assumption that all of the names and addresses on a mailing list are displayed when more than one mailing list item is selected. The behavior was changed to display only those that have unique addresses. Therefore not all of the mailing records were shown in the displayed list. This caused the delete function to sometimes get out of sync with the underlying tables. This problem has been corrected.

Several operations would leave the cursor positioned at the top or bottom of the list, rather than at (or near) the appropriate record. All functions now position the cursor on the appropriate record.

Label Reports

Sort Options Radio Buttons

Sort options are now on the Label Reports form. The choices are sort "By Name" or sort "By Postal Code".

Filter Options

The form now features a filter that will disregard any address that has already been output to the file. This is controlled by a check box under the heading "Filter options - No Dup. Addrs.".

Output options

There are now two Output options controlled by radio buttons. These are "Normal format" and "Publisher format". When "Normal format is selected, the output is the same as it always has been. When "Publisher format" is selected, a special export format is generated that many commercial printers require for input to their programs. Try it and examine the format. Also, when this special format is selected the "Sort options" and "Line termination options" panels are hidden as the data is always sorted in postal code order, and it is always a standard ASCII text file.

These new features have not been integrated into the standard Address Report dialog yet.

Publisher’s Format

Mailing lists can now be written in a special format used by at least some commercial publishing houses.