Hi
We are using letters for versions, and a document have an a (lowercase) as version as long as it is preliminary.
When the document is approved it change version to A (uppercase).
ProjectWise is not fond of this and claims that the "Document version name (identifier) is already in use. Make a new version name and try again".
This have of course something to du with the case-sensetive option of something, but what?
Is it a database setting, and if it is, does this have influence on other things ?
I hope someone out there have the answer.
Thanks
Finn
Hi Finn, I suspect that you are actually creating a new version (rather than renaming an existing version) when you change the letter from lower to uppercase. In that event, since the underlying storage medium for the files is NTFS (which is case-insensitive), the operation fails (because the uppercase version would overwrite the previous lowercase version) in the on-disk storage.
If you can provide a detailed test case, this can be confirmed.
HTH
Mike
As I understand Finn's post, I believe this is the example scenario that is the problem: there is a document with current version string of 'a', and they want to create a new version of the document, and enter a version string of 'A'. If the database is not case sensitive, this will fail in the way described. In this scenario, it isn't a file name/NTFS file system conflict; it's purely a database issue. This because of uniqueness being enforced by one of the indexes on DMS_DOC table, which includes the version string as part of that uniqueness.
My advice would be to contact the DBA for the datasource and ask them to confirm if the database is (or is not case sensitive). If it is not, the solution would be to try to change it to be case sensitive. But tread carefully here. It would probably be good to involve Bentley TSG in this type of change, as there may be other unintended consequences of such a change.
Please note that I post here on a voluntary basis and am not a Bentley employee.
Hi guys
Thank you for your replies.
Jeff, you're correct in your assumption. It is a new version of an existing file and therefor it is not a file name problem but a DB problem.
I will talk to the DBA to have him change the datasource to case sensitive. But does the whole database need to be changed og is there a possibility just to change the table DMS_DOC to case sensitive ?
Thanks again for your replies
Regards,
Finn Mejding
CAD Manager
Railway and Metro
COWI
Answer Verified By: Finn Mejding
I would suugest it is a featue or projectwise - if you use the new version function to "change"the version letter from a to A you are creating a new version A deom version a in the same table - there is a good chance bentley is doing a case insensitve search to make sure the version is unique.
I have built a change version customisation to correctly rename versions. It works by creating new a version say $ then deleting the existing version then creating a new version of $ with the correct version then deleting version $.
these actions can be done with the standard bentley new version tool if you have suffiicient access to the document.
FWIW, my impression is that using a version string to indicate if a document is "preliminary" or something else isn't necessarily the best "fit". Seems to me that using a ProjectWise workflow with appropriate states would be a better solution. You also gain the ability to change users' access to the document on state change, i.e. when you change the state from "preliminary" to whatever, you can take away write access from whoever shouldn't be changing it anymore.
Alternately, you could add a user attribute that you can toggle from "preliminary" to whatever else it could be and not create a new version.
Ian, you suggestion would be a good work-around for doing the job.
Dan, We can't just teach an old dog new tricks :-) it have something to do with our customers demand for naming the files and the whole workflow in this. I agree that this is not the best way in an electronic world and the demands are inherited from the time we used paper and pencil.
Thanks for all the replies