In the past few weeks I have been contacted by two different users with xBase data (dBASE, FoxPro, etc). Both were trying to read the data using CR 2020 and not finding a way to connect. One had to upgrade to 64-bit because some of the xBase.dbf files had gone past 2GB.  As I now know, a 32-bit process can only use a maximum of 2 GB of memory. I didn’t know this was a general limit, but I did know that when one of my MS Access databases gets to 2GB I have to purge and pack it before my reports will run.  The other user upgraded without knowing that his connectivity would be affected. They might be able to revert back to CR 2016.

I have still not upgraded to CR 2020 because I use DAO connections and have little motivation to change them. However, if I get a slow week, I plan to setup a test environment to experiment with CR 2020. Then I can see if there are any workarounds for the xBase issues.

If I can’t find a driver that can connect directly to xBase there is one other thing I may try. I have read that MS Access 2016 can connect to dBASE files. It may be possible that MS Access 2016 can be used as a bridge between Crystal and dBASE files.  If so that might work for other xBase flavors like FoxPro.  I will post what I find.

If anyone else has any ideas, I would love to hear from you.

This morning a customer asked me to round a DateTime value to the nearest quarter hour. I had written this logic for them before but we couldn’t find the formula so I started from scratch. When I was done it didn’t look familiar so I suspected I had used a different approach this time.

Later we found the original formula, and it was longer and more complex. That is when I remembered writing it, and saying at the time that there had to be a more elegant approach. I must have been off that day because I couldn’t seem to find the simple solution and just wrote something that worked.  Today it clicked:

Local DateTimeVar DT := {Orders.Ship Date};
Local DateVar D := Date(DT);
Local numbervar Sec := DateDiff('s', D, DT);
DateAdd('s', Mround(Sec, 15*60), D);

And thanks to Ido Millet of Millet Software for suggesting the even better approach to this formula now shown above.