LubeSoft® has the capacity to store hundreds of thousands of records in each of its data files. Because these records are accessed thousands of times during the course of an average business day, LubeSoft® needs to be able to locate them quickly and easily. The computer has two options when searching for a particular record. It can search through every record in the data file until it finds the one it needs. This method can take an extremely long time depending on the amount of data in the file. A more efficient way is for the computer to maintain an organized listing (index) of one or more elements of each record in the data file (such as a customer’s name or vehicle ID).
A telephone book is a good example of how an indexing system works. The phone book is an alphabetical listing of the names of people with phones in a certain area. To get a phone number for a person, you must look up their name on this list.
A computer index works the same way as the phone book. It is an organized listing of data from each record. An example of an index used by LubeSoft® is one that contains an alphabetical listing of each vehicle ID and the record number that vehicle’s information is stored in. When you enter the vehicle ID during invoicing, the computer quickly scans through this index and finds the record number of the vehicle. Using this record number, the computer can pull up the vehicle’s information.
If an index file becomes damaged or corrupted, it may start pointing to the wrong record number. Imagine what would happen if somehow all the phone numbers in a phone book got mixed up. When you tried to look up someone’s number, the wrong phone number would be next to their name, and you would end up calling the wrong person.
Reindexing is the process that recreates and reorganizes these index files. This ensures that the indexes point to the correct records in the data file. Specific files are reindexed automatically as needed. You may also be instructed by ISI Support to manually reindex files using either the Inventory File Utilities Menu (1-7-8) or the Lubrication Utility Menu (1-8) .
If you do a hard shutdown, LubeSoft® will automatically reindex all files to make sure that all of your information is organized correctly. This process could take a considerable amount of time. See the Controlled Shutdown article for instructions on doing a controlled shutdown, which will avoid this automatic reindexing.
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A hard shutdown can cause considerable damage to files and the operating system. |
