Displays the name of the current SYSTEM database (as stored in the DP4 licence file), and allows the name and path of an alternative system database to be selected and stored in the licence file. You may find using a different name for the system database convenient if you need to run multiple releases of DP4 on a single machine, or develop DP4 systems for more than one customer.
| Command Tail | Description |
|---|---|
|
dbname |
For example: NEWSYS |
|
drive:\dir\name |
For example: C:\DB\SYSTEM |
Specifying a full path name with the system database should be a temporary measure only as it can cause problems in utilities that need to update the system database or generate filenames based on the system database name. It is sometimes useful to specify a full path name on a temporary basis, for example if you have unintentionally managed to set the database locations recorded in the licence file to invalid values.
You may wonder why SYSDB is a separate utility, and its functionality is not built into one of the other utilities, such as DFSETUP. The reason is, that without SYSDB there would be no way to repair a DP4 installation where the database locations stored in the licence file were invalid, since DFSETUP itself needs acces to the system database to display its dialogs. Because SYSDB allows you to specify a full path to your system database, you can "bootstrap" DP4 by installing a new copy of the system database, and then run DFSETUP to correct the file locations.
You should note the following important points about SYSDB and the system database:
The DP4 database manager only reads the DP4 licence file when it starts up, so after running SYSDB you need to stop and restart the DP4 database manager for the new setting to become effective.
The DP4 install program installs the system database as though it were an application database named SYSTEM,i.e. it pays no attention to your SYSDB settings. On the other hand DBRESTOR and DBBACKUP do respect the SYSDB setting when run with the -system command tail.