ChimneySweep Release 6.0 Features

ChimneySweep® 6.0 Features

ChimneySweep Release 6.0, which became generally available in late August, 2010, is the long-awaited overhaul of the entire ChimneySweep system. This page describes what’s new about this exciting new release.

32-bit only:

The most fundamental change is that ChimneySweep is now 32-bit only. It no longer supports the 16-bit IDAPI (or ODAPI) database engines, instead requiring that 32-bit BDE engine must be available on the machine. (This database engine will, of course, have been automatically installed with Paradox® for Windows, or with Delphi® versions 2 through 6, or by the installer of whatever 32-bit application you might be using with ChimneySweep, and it is fully compatible with earlier database files.)

With this change, ChimneySweep is now able to properly access the Windows Registry, and to be fully aware of the security features that are available only in 32-bit Windows systems. The internal capabilities of the product are also very considerably enhanced, as we are now able to take full advantage of software which exists only for 32-bit environments, and to use newer versions of Delphi to build the product itself.

The product’s installer is also 32-bit, which eliminates many problems that made installation difficult on modern Windows systems.

Important: Your BDE version might need to be updated:

The ChimneySweep product is built in the Delphi programming language. All versions prior to Release 6.0 were built using the two earliest versions of that system: Delphi 1.0 and 2.0. But times have changed. ChimneySweep 6.0, is built using a much more modern version, Delphi 6.0. This does make ChimneySweep 6.0 incompatible with some early versions of BDE. (But don’t worry ... you can fix the problem ... read on.)

The BDE database-engine (which is the core database-handling technology used by Paradox, ChimneySweep, and so on) is designed to be backward (not forward...) compatible. Older versions of client software (such as Paradox, or ChimneySweep...) will work with newer versions of BDE, but newer client software (such as ChimneySweep 6.0 ...) might not be compatible with older versions of BDE.

If they aren’t compatible, the applications (including ChimneySweep...) are able to recognize that the incompatibility exists, such that they won’t risk doing any damage to your database files!

How will you know if you have this problem? ChimneySweep will generate an error-message like this one when you try to run a job, or to create a new one:

“Unable to initialize BDE session (RC 12033)”

Code 12033 (hexadecimal $2F01) means “incompatible interface.” (The exact number that you see might be slightly different, but it will be close.) Yes, we agree that this message is much too cryptic, and you can be sure that we’ll improve it very soon...

The recommended solution is to update your copy of BDE to a newer version. Your (older...) existing software should remain compatible, and (newer...) ChimneySweep 6.0’s technical requirements should be satisfied.

Even though Borland (InPrise, etc...) no longer publishes BDE, they do continue to provide updates to it, which you can find at these URLs (or from other pages that you can reach from them):

These installers will verify that you have a copy of BDE installed on your system before performing the update.

Note that these pages also provide legacy copies of the 16-bit IDAPI software, which is not usable by ChimneySweep 6.0.

All of these releases of BDE retain backward compatibility with your existing database files.

And now, a word from our lawyers: Obviously, before updating your BDE version, or doing anything else to your system, you should make sure that you have access to your original installation disks for Paradox, etc. As with all computer software, “rude surprises” can happen, and you need to be prepared to deal with them. When you finish any such change, even if it appears to have succeeded, you also need to very carefully test everything to make sure that it still works as it should. In giving you these helpful suggestions, we expect that you will find that you can follow them without difficulty, but we obviously can’t (and don’t) guarantee results.

Nevertheless, backward compatible:

ChimneySweep jobs continue to be backward-compatible with all previous releases. Jobs that were built on any previous release (16-bit or 32-bit) can be run today, and they will, insofar as possible, work exactly as they used to. And yet, they will work in a completely new way!

Operating-system versions and compatibility:

ChimneySweep 6.0 requires a version of 32-bit Windows® that is “Windows NT 4.0 or better.” This includes nearly all systems in common use today, including:

Windows XP
Windows Vista
Windows 7

The following operating systems are not compatible:

Windows 3.1 or earlier
Windows for Workgroups
Windows 95, 98, or Me.

... and it should go without saying that you should not still be using software of such “vintage,” especially not on a computer that is connected to the Internet! Substantial improvements have been made to the Windows operating system, and to computer hardware, which these too-old systems cannot use. (Even if you “really, really, really don’t like change,” you really don’t have any choice anymore...)

The Windows emulation environment in IBM’s OS/2® operating system is not compatible. (So far as we know ...)

Modern versions of the Wine™ software for Linux® probably will work if they are properly configured. We do not officially support this or any other “compatibility” environment.

ChimneySweep 6.0 is a 32-bit application. As such, it can be run in 32-bit mode on current 64-bit Windows versions. (We do not, at this time, have any plans to release a 64-bit native version of ChimneySweep.)

Jobs and All Output are “Cataloged” and kept:

Prior to this release, ChimneySweep jobs had to be stored in particular locations on your hard drive, which you had to establish when creating the job. Now, all of the jobs that you create are stored in a “catalog” directory, although you can also save separate copies.

The catalog is also used to store the output of a ChimneySweep job. That is to say, the output of every job. Each and every time a job is run, its output is saved in the catalog, so that you can view it individually. (The days of a single flat-file CHMNYLOG.TXT are gone for good.) The output of one job never overwrites the output of another. Output files are kept until you choose to remove them.

Job output is in XML format, viewed as a web page:

The output of a job is no longer a “flat ASCII” file, i.e. CHMNYLOG.TXT, that is constantly replaced each time. Now, the output of each job is now an XML file that conforms to an established schema. When you view the output, a CSS style-sheet is automatically applied, creating an HTML page, and the result is displayed in a built-in web browser window.

Of course, you don’t have to be explicitly aware of this magic: “it just happens.” But for those who may have a need to process the output of a ChimneySweep job using third-party tools, this arrangement is considerably more flexible.

As we said above, the output of each job is kept, separately from all the other copies, until you choose to discard it.

The processing sequence of a job has changed slightly:

Internally, all ChimneySweep jobs work by establishing the necessary settings in memory, then invoking a common script which we supply. It is this script, rather than your job, which determines how the operations that were requested by your job are carried out. Previously, this sequence was constrained to use temporary files to control the processing, because in the early days of ChimneySweep, “1 megabyte of RAM was a lot.” The new version uses an XML node-structure to describe the tables that are being processed and what has been done to them so far. It is therefore able to perform some operations in a different order, thereby possibly reducing the number of times you might have to re-run a job to effect a particular repair.

National language support is improved:

16-bit Windows environments had only a primitive understanding of national language issues, and only the barest support for things like Unicode. Release 6.0 is built using a considerably more advanced programming environment than the one which had to be used to build previous releases.

The support for national-language character sets within Paradox tables is also improved, making much better use of BDE’s language-drivers. This makes it much easier to reliably use the high-speed verification algorithms against tables having non-ASCII character sets.

The scheduler is gone:

ChimneySweep releases 4 and 5 included a very primitive “scheduler” facility which was, in retrospect, entirely unsatisfactory. It required that a copy of the product be running at all times, within a logged-on Windows session. A Windows service was not available.

After making some preliminary efforts toward producing a Windows scheduling service to replace this existing functionality, we realized that the most appropriate thing to do is simply to use the very good scheduled-tasks facility that Windows already provides. Therefore, the entire scheduler function was removed from the Release 6.0 product. To run a job on a regular schedule, simply “run” it within the Windows scheduled-tasks control panel.

A new license code is required:

ChimneySweep 6.0 is a new “major release,” and therefore requires that a new, upgraded license be installed on all machines where the product is to be used. License codes from earlier product releases will not be recognized.