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In the first post of this series we wrote about cleaning up the files associated with DB/TextWorks and in the second we covered rationalizing your textbase elements.  In this post we’ll discuss some steps you can take to protect and maintain your textbases in good health.

Usually Inmagic DB/TextWorks textbases can function for many years without any intervention or problems. However if you do ever see a “Stop: textbase is in an inconsistent state….” message, please do NOT keep working in it! We have had clients tell us that they just ignore that message not realizing that the textbase might be corrupt. Frequently this message is just caused by a temporary loss of network connectivity while a record is being edited and can be fixed very quickly.

We recommend every so often running Check Textbase from Manage Textbases on a menu imagescreen (i.e. without a textbase open). This will detect and repair problems in the textbase and your user file. The process generally takes just a few minutes for most textbases, but can take a while for very large ones. We suggest specifying Options to Repair Structural Problems and Rebuild 10 or more Damaged Indexes (depending on textbase size). If any problems are found these will be listed in the .chk file with a recommendation for action. Running Check Textbase in this manner will clear the inconsistent state message if it was just caused by a network glitch.

As part of your regular maintenance we also recommend confirming that you have a backup routine for your textbases. We have have heard some horror stories over the years.  Two clients had fires, and two had floods in their buildings.  One of these had no offsite backup and lost several years work.  Another client had all their textbases deleted by an over zealous IT guy who didn’t know what they were and figured they weren’t important, and another client hit batch delete instead of batch modify!  For many of our smaller clients without any IT support you can always simply make a backup by copying your textbases to a USB stick and taking it home with you.

The above information applies to the non-SQL version of DB/TextWorks. Clients with DB/Text for SQL versions should ensure their IT staff are aware of the recommendations in the Administrators Guide available from the Inmagic extranet.

For more information, check out the Help file built in to DB/TextWorks, or the printable PDFfor version 13.   If you run Check Textbase and need help implementing the recommendations, please contact Inmagic Support if you have a maintenance contract, or we can help you on a consulting basis.

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