This is a quick tip (and thus something I don’t have to remember as long as I have an Internet-connection and a browser at my disposal
) for all FrontBase-users out there. The following is a rundown of handy commands if you need to log activities on a database.
sudo ln -s /Users/admin/FBLogs /Library/FrontBase/LogFiles(OS X)
Creates a symbolic link to the directory FBLogs (the directory needs to be created first) named LogFiles in your FrontBase-directory. If FrontBase “sees” this directory, all logs will be created and written there instead of the standard-location in Databases. If you are using Linux or Unix, choose a convenient location on your hard-disk.
Now you’re ready to log (and roll), but you have to tell FrontBase first. Fire up sql92, connect to the database in question and use
SET WRITE SQL TRUE GLOBAL;
to convince FrontBase to start logging. To turn logging off, use
SET WRITE SQL FALSE GLOBAL;
The logfile-name is the one with “sql” added, so [name_of_your_database].fb.sql is the file the commands shown above use for logging. Said file will grow to astonishing proportions in a very short time, on a busy database, that is. If you want to use a new file while logging is active, use
SWITCH TO NEW SQL LOG;
The current file will be renamed to [name_of_your_database].fb.sql.YYYYMMDDHHMMSS and a new file named [name_of_your_database].fb.sql will be created and used (keep this in mind when using tail -f).
Again, this is supposed to be a debugging-feature, not something you enable and let run forever. Check out the documentation, there is more to logging in FrontBase; especially the explanation of the contents of your log files.
Hope this helps, if you tend (like me) to forget these commands, bookmark the post.