Index-only files¶
If a file’s record layout consists entirely of key fields, it can be created without a data file. Only the index file (.k extension) exists for such a file.
Suppressing the creation of a data file saves disk storage, as if no data fields are defined the data file merely duplicates the information stored in the index. However, full data recovery using the kfri program after a system crash is more likely if a data file exists. For this reason it may be advisable to restrict the use of index-only files to files which the application can rebuild from other files.
The newkf, kfcopy and reformat utilities have a -i option available to specify that the new file be created as index-only. The option is ignored if any data fields have been defined for the file.
The Sculptor File Manager is the Windows front end for keyed file utility programs.
RELATED TOPICS |