AntiVirus Software and D3NT Files

I was just installing Norton AntiVirus 2006 from Symantec, and as I was setting up the Exclusion list of files to not scan I figured I’d share my list with you.

It doesn’t make sense to scan large files that we know are Pick data files because Windows viruses can’t hide in there. (At least until some hacker sees this list and decides to target D3 shops, but we can address that when it happens.) So to cut down scan time and some system overhead when you’re doing filesaves and other operations, for D3 exclude files that match these patterns:

• *.D3C – D3 Control Block (FCB)
• *.D3D – D3 File Dictionary
• *.D3F – D3 Flashed Object (extension not required)
• *.D3I – D3 Flash Interpreter Object
• *.D3M – D3 Master Dictionary
• *.D3O – D3 Overflow Table
• *.D3P – D3 Pseudo Tape (extension not required but this is the accepted standard)
• *.D3R – D3 Registry File
• *.D3S – D3 System (MDS table, normally one per domain)
• *.D3T – D3 File Data (Primary Table Space of hashed file)
• *.D3V – D3 Virtual Data (Big VME BLOB)
• *.D3X – D3 B-Tree Index

All of the files except as otherwise noted are used in the FSI. For NAV, you must enter these exclusions into both the Auto-Protect Exclusions and the Manual Exclusions. I have no clue about other AV software and don’t care much, but follow the same guidelines if they apply to other AV products.

For mvBASE, you should exclude *.VTF.

With other MV platforms I don’t believe there is any solid way to tell the DBMS files from other files. For example, jBASE ends some filenames with [D, and Unidata begins some data file names with D_, but you can’t count on this.

I’ll add info here if someone gives me some solid information for any MV platform.