I have some power users that during the life of there job they create large focsort.foc files.
Is it safe to delete this, in code?

Will FOCUS re-create it if/when needed again?

I already have the user coding DOS del on some other interim files as he completes each step of his job, which helps, but this focsort.foc is killing me.

Thanks,
--wg

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Winfred Gunter,

Yep.

This is something that we do here, when we have lots of large files.

Typically ours are hold files.

FOCSORT will be recreated if its removed.

Also have you tried SET EXTSORT = ON. The files are cleaned up after the sort.

Waz,

Are you saying that SET EXTSORT = ON will tell webfocus to clean up the focsort.foc during a job process, rather than waiting until the agent is done?

If so, that's terrific. What we are trying right now, is DOS DEL focsort.foc within the job steps (in addition to DOS DEL temphold.ftm files).

I just read-up on EXTSORT because I was remembering from years ago.... It appears that EXTSORT is for an external sort utility like syncsort... we don't have that available.

Thanks for the response,
--wg

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Winfred Gunter,

These links provide info on FOCSORT and the settings that affect it. None of this information will help in deleting FOCSORT during a session, but it might help in avoiding the need to do so.

FOCSORT Limit

FOCSORT Processing

WF comes with the external sort module.

The FOCSORT will not be removed, but may not be created/replaced

Thanks for the responses....

I've read the links and I'll try the setting extsort, tablef and matrix, but my user is doing MATCHes. It may still use focsort, if I understood what I read.

Thanks for the ideas,
--wg

Waz,

I tried SET EXTSORT = ON and when the job runs it gives and error:

0 ERROR AT OR NEAR LINE 106 IN PROCEDURE ADHOCRQ FOCEXEC *
(FOC909) CRITICAL ERROR IN EXTERNAL SORT. RETURN CODE IS: 00000332

So, wf may come with external sort module, but apparently I don't have it (or configured).

--wg

EXTSORT has been around for 10-12 years? IMO has never been reliable, especially with Multi-Verb request. Over the years I have tried using it several time and would get signifcantly different results with EXTSORT=ON vs. EXTSORT=OFF. Therefore we always leave it off. Maybe it has been fixed (haven't tried using it in several years), but I'd stay away from it unless all you are doing is sorting and do extensive testing to make sure your results are the same with EXTSORT ON or OFF.

I try to write my code in such a way that the database does the sorting (which won't happen with multi-verb requests) or code SQL Passthru.