Release 6.02.005 save conflicts and empty key families

NoteRelease readiness

On 9 October 2026, the maintainer confirmed that both final Office files had been compiled and tested and that their digital signatures were valid. Formal PR approval and merge remain before publication.

Save-conflict choices

The original suggestion came from ASEANstats; see issue #43.

The Save data conflict dialog retains Yes, No, and List details and adds Yes to all and No to all. These choices are available only to administrators, as with the existing conflict override.

Choice Effect
Yes Accept this conflict prompt; later conflicts can prompt again.
No Stop the current workbook’s remaining database save, as before.
Yes to all Accept this and later save conflicts in the current operation.
No to all Reject this conflict and later save conflicts in the current operation.

A standalone save or export starts with no remembered answer. A batch retains the answer across its workbooks and repeat passes, and clears it on completion, cancellation, or error. A new batch starts with no remembered answer. Read-only change checks do not replace the batch’s answer.

No to all does not cancel the entire batch: each later workbook can save until a conflict is encountered, at which point its remaining database save stops. Workbooks without conflicts continue normally. Neither No nor No to all rolls back data already written earlier in the operation. The existing workbook-file save and batch log behavior is retained.

The extra buttons are created by the form code, so the existing binary form designer is preserved. Their captions use the existing English, French, Portuguese, and Indonesian resources. Escape, Enter, and the window-close fallback reject the current prompt by default.

Empty key-family structure editor and credit

The editor is selectively adapted from Karna Mandarawata (@karna-stats), PR #41, pinned at 60e43df42425552771a3ae37411fef8d85677d69. His original form designer and dimension reordering contribution are retained. Unrelated PR changes are not included; the earlier 6.02.005 improvements remain in place.

Only administrators can edit the structure of a selected family with zero rows. Other families may contain data. Checks run at selection, dialog entry and Apply; failures deny the change. Access also requires exclusive database access during Apply to exclude concurrent asynchronous writes. Changes are staged and confirmed before application, with transactional rollback.

See the integration and attribution guide for exact provenance, scope, reproduction steps and the final Excel checklist.

Current validation status

  • Automated source and tooling tests: 114 passed.
  • Repository pre-commit checks: passed.
  • VBA security scanner: 0 errors, with existing warnings retained.
  • Excel import preflight: passed, 189 components in each supplied template.
  • Native VBA compilation, final Office-file testing and signature checks: confirmed complete by the maintainer on 9 October 2026.
  • Isolated Excel form execution: 16 passed (four choices in four languages). The test exercised the actual exported form and its button events.
  • Compact and expanded dialog layouts: visually checked. Escape returned LogYesNo=False, ApplyToAll=False.
  • The actual VBA row-check function was exercised in scratch Excel against a disposable ACE database: empty, populated/NULL Value, missing table, closed connection and a later committed insert. Transaction rollback preserved the inserted row and restored the original table.
  • Exclusive Access mode: verified that another process prevents acquisition, and that a held exclusive connection blocks a new connection from another process. The repeatable Windows/Excel test is tools/verify_empty_key_family_windows.py and uses only disposable fixtures.
  • Automated database regression checks used disposable Access databases. These do not establish SQL Server integration coverage.

Repeatable verification checklist

  1. Import the source into separate copies of both supplied 6.02.004 Office files and apply vba/resources/office-ui.csv. Keep the originals unchanged.
  2. Compile each project using Debug > Compile VBAProject and verify About displays 6.02.005.
  3. In a disposable database, create conflicting saves across multiple columns, DBLinks, and workbooks. Verify all four choices and List details.
  4. Check that No stops the current workbook and that No to all also suppresses later batch conflict prompts, while conflict-free workbooks still save.
  5. Verify a new save, export, or batch prompts again after normal completion, cancellation, and an induced batch error. Include a repeated batch.
  6. Verify a non-administrator still cannot override another workbook’s data.
  7. Check both compact and expanded layouts and the four language captions.
  8. Sign and package NADABAS.6.02.005.xlsm with NADABAS.xlam only after functional verification. Record final SHA-256 checksums after signing.

Review findings

Large data areas are saved one column at a time, which explains repeated conflict prompts. The existing SaveAll flag forces value updates; it does not remember the user’s dialog choice. The new answer is stored separately.

The save loop writes incrementally. Its existing cancellation flag stops subsequent writes but does not implement a transaction rollback. This release preserves that behavior and makes the limitation explicit above.

Simplified Key families window

The release preserves the original Key families window. Its only new action is Edit structure…, beside the existing Create workbook with data button at the bottom, with the empty-family status below it. The inline draft, Prepare workbook and Activate DBDef draft controls are removed from this window. The existing Edit structure dialog, empty-only safeguards and save-conflict choices remain. No extra workbook migration step is part of this interaction.

An isolated Excel layout check verified that all 22 original controls retain their geometry, with only the Edit structure button and status label added.

Access connection correction

The reported “Could not find installable ISAM” error was reproduced using NADABAS’s actual legacy connection string. Appending connection options after its bare Jet OLEDB:Database; token caused ACE to reject the string. Structure editing now preserves that working string and sets exclusive mode through the ADO Mode property. This was a connection error, not an administrator-permission failure. The existing admin access and empty-family checks remain in place.

The isolated Excel/ACE regression test now uses the legacy NADABAS string and passes both exclusive-open and cross-process-lock checks. Errors before any schema work now explicitly say that the structure was not changed, without incorrectly attributing every connection error to another open connection.

Connection identity correction

A follow-up error (3704, operation on a closed object) occurred when reopening replaced objects passed as class members. The caller could retain the old, closed connection. The helper now takes object references ByVal and reopens the same connection and catalogue instead of replacing them.

The isolated Excel regression now exercises class-member arguments, begins a transaction on the caller’s connection, creates and renames a disposable table, rolls back and restores the normal connection mode. These checks passed along with the existing empty-only, concurrent-connection and legacy-string tests. The maintainer confirmed final Office-file testing on 9 October 2026.

Installation and package

Extract NADABAS.6.02.005.zip and keep NADABAS.6.02.005.xlsm and NADABAS.xlam together. Verify their signatures, open the XLSM installer, then restart Excel and confirm that About displays 6.02.005.

The ZIP uploaded to the release draft has SHA-256:

efa22bdc32fd6abc4ed7d75afb323d6920f9d6f5728442c3e00aa9a58a9048c7

If the uploaded ZIP is replaced, update this checksum before publication. Additional Sonar cleanup is deferred to issue #46.