Fully qualified paths in st files lead to broken BI files

Posted by James Palmer on 22-Feb-2019 10:20

I've found what I think is quite a serious issue. I've reproduced in 11.6 and 11.7.4. A prostrct repair on a database with an st file with fully qualified storage area locations which are wrong can lead to the BI getting out of date. Steps to reproduce: 

  1. Create a sports2000 database in directory 1
  2. Update the st file to have fully qualified paths
  3. Copy the folder and contents to directory 2
  4. proserve the database in directory 1 
  5. prostrct repair the database in directory 2 without fixing the paths
  6. Access the db in directory 2 in single user mode
  7. Try stopping and starting the database in directory 1
  8. You get errors 886-888

** The database was last used <date/time>. (886) 
** The before-image file expected <date/time>. (887) 
** Those dates don't match, so you have the wrong copy of one of them. (888) 

In my opinion this shouldn't be allowed to happen. There should be some sort of control in place that stops the prostrct repair from happening - particularly against files on a running database. 

All Replies

Posted by George Potemkin on 22-Feb-2019 10:31

A .db file contains the pathes to all database extents.

Db extents do not contain a path to their parent .db file.

Prostrct repair is unable to check if more then one .db file is linked to the same db extents.

Prostrct repair just updates the headers of db extents based on information it read from .db file you specified in its command line.

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