Supplemental Program ARCTRANS A supplemental program is a program that can be used to perform tasks that are not a part of the day to day operation of your system but instead are used infrequently to affect the data that the program uses. Such a case involves the archiving of transactions. Archiving should be performed only when the high transaction number approaches 150,000. If you have a large hard drive with plenty of free space, it is fine to let the transaction number go as high as you want. Each transaction takes up 62 bytes, so if you have 1 million transactions your transaction file will take up 62 megabytes. You must decide when to archive transactions, depending on how much disk space you have and how far back you want history reports for movies and customers to go. Arctrans is a program that reduces the size of the transaction file created by and used by Rapid Rental II. This is useful because your hard disk space is most likely too valuable to be storing old transaction data that you do not need anymore. Floppy disk storage is better for this purpose. For these reasons old transactions should be removed from the main transaction file (TRANSACT.DAT) and stored on floppy disks. Archiving transactions should NOT be done during the day. It should be done at the end of the day after a day end has been performed. IF YOU ARE ON A NETWORK, NO OTHER COMPUTER CAN BE ACCESSING ANY RAPID RENTAL PROGRAM WHEN YOU ARE PERFORMING TRANSACTION ARCHIVING. EXIT ALL OTHER COMPUTERS TO THE MAIN MENU OR DOS. Archiving your transactions will affect the following operations of the program: L for last rented scans. They won't go back as far. However, you can insert the archive floppy disk at the end of the scan if you want to continue scanning further back. 1. List transactions by number (#9 5) 2. List transactions by date (#9 6) 3. Customer transaction history (#9 7) 4. Movie renting history (#9 8) 5. Re print any receipt (not from today) 6. Transaction date summary 7. Archiving will NOT affect the following: 8. List any day's totals. 9. List totals for a period. 10. Month end report. 11. Deciding how many transactions to archive ARCTRANS will archive a variable number of transactions. You can set your own number or you can use a default number in the ARCTRANS program. Use the default value of 30,000 unless, for some reason, you want to archive a smaller or larger number of transactions. Floppy disks required The number of floppy disks required by the program will depend on the size of your floppy drive. Common floppy disk sizes are 1.2 megabytes (5.25") and 1.4 megabytes (3.5"). Some older model computers use 360k or 720k diskette sizes. The archive disk size is automatically determined by the ARCTRANS program. Transaction file modification The program actually alters your transaction file size by taking the first 30,000 transactions and moving them to floppy disks. The size of the file is then reduced by eliminating the first 30,000 transactions. The program determines how much disk space will be required to perform this operation and compares this to your available disk space so that you will not attempt to archive when it could cause data loss. Archived transaction storage The ARCTRANS program will write the archived transactions to floppy diskettes you insert during the archive procedure, or to a file on the hard disk called ARCTRANS.DAT, depending on a setting in the ARCTRANS program (the default is to archive to floppies). Running the ARCTRANS program The ARCTRANS program must exist in the same directory as the video program so that it can access the same data files. To execute the program you must exit the video program to DOS and type ARCTRANS and press the key. The ARCTRANS menu will appear. Option #1 will allow you to change the number of transactions to archive. Before you start, it is a good idea to find out how many floppy disks are required for the archive procedure. Option#4 will give you this information. If you just bought a box of disks from a store, each individual disk must be formatted before it can be used on your computer. Option #5 will format a floppy disk for you. Once you are ready to archive, choose option #2, Begin archiving transactions. Type YES to confirm you want to begin the archive procedure. During the archive procedure, the computer will prompt you to insert new disks (if required). If they are not formatted when you insert them, the computer will format them for you. To exit the program when done, press the ESC key then select E-exit to DOS. You can now run the video program again. ARCHIVING TRANSACTIONS In order to archive transactions you need to: Perform a data backup (C-4 from the main menu) Determine the number of transactions you want to archive by System Status (C-6) and write down the Low & High transaction number and finding out the first transaction of the date you want to be able to scan back to with the L for rental history. Subtract the first transaction of the date you want from the high transaction number, then subtract the low transaction number. (High Transaction number - Low Transaction Number - First transaction of day to scan back to = # of transaction to archive) Exit Rapid Rental Run the arctrans program by typing ARCTRANS and hitting in the \VIDEO directory. You will see: (Although you will probably have more than 32 transactions...) Under number 1 select the number of transaction you want to archive. Then use number 4 to determine the number of BLANK FORMATTED floppy disks you need. If you need to format more disks you can use number 5. NOTE: All other computers must not be running Rapid Rental. Once you have started archiving transactions you cannot stop the process so make sure you have enough time. It will take approximately 3-5 minutes per disk required, depending on how fast your computer equipment is. Make certain you have a good backup before performing this operation.