I keep my main BE database on my machine at work, and I share the drive so I can access it from home. I do that because all the changes are kept in one place, rather than having several different versions of the DB on different computers. I tried to access that DB today but it doesn't seem to be working--nothing is happening. (FWIW, I tried both clicking on the file from the finder, and opening BE first then navigating to the DB.) Does BE have some problem with accessing DBs on a shared drive? Here are some other questions (that I searched for on the forum but didn't find):
1. I noticed when I converned from EN to BE that the file sizes in the latter are much larger, 4 times so in my case. That would make accessing a file on shared drive difficult, as searching it would take a fair amount of time.
2. This might have been addressed before, but it appears that BE DBs do not have a file extension?
Thanks in advance.
Joe
Accessing a BE DB on a Shared Drive
Hi,
1. Bookends can work with a db on a shared drive. There must be read/write access. And only one user at a time -- no simultaneous access.
2. The file size is larger, but the searches are a lot faster than EndNote. Size has nothing to do with speed of searching (much of the size is due to, in fact, extensive indexing for speedy searches).
3. You can use .bdb. But in general, Bookends uses file type and creator metadata.
Jon
Sonny Software
1. Bookends can work with a db on a shared drive. There must be read/write access. And only one user at a time -- no simultaneous access.
2. The file size is larger, but the searches are a lot faster than EndNote. Size has nothing to do with speed of searching (much of the size is due to, in fact, extensive indexing for speedy searches).
3. You can use .bdb. But in general, Bookends uses file type and creator metadata.
Jon
Sonny Software
Hi Jon,
Thanks for your reply. I've found that the DB on my shared drive is "grayed out" when I try to open it with BE on my local machine. So I can't click on it to open it. From Finder, I clicked on "Get Info" and I do have read and write permissions for the file. Again, when I click on the file from within Finder, nothing happens--the DB does not load into BE on my local machine.
Thanks in advance for your help.
Joe
Thanks for your reply. I've found that the DB on my shared drive is "grayed out" when I try to open it with BE on my local machine. So I can't click on it to open it. From Finder, I clicked on "Get Info" and I do have read and write permissions for the file. Again, when I click on the file from within Finder, nothing happens--the DB does not load into BE on my local machine.
Thanks in advance for your help.
Joe
You can try adding .bdb to it's name and see if that helps.
But my guess is that the metadata was stripped out by the transfer to the shared disk.
To add it back, get FileType from VersionTracker (it's free). Then open the db and set these:
Creator: BERB
Type: BEDN
(that's assuming this is a Bookends 9 database. If it is not, tell me and I'll tell you what file type to set it to -- do NOT use BEDN if it's a Bookends 8 database).
Jon
Sonny Software
But my guess is that the metadata was stripped out by the transfer to the shared disk.
To add it back, get FileType from VersionTracker (it's free). Then open the db and set these:
Creator: BERB
Type: BEDN
(that's assuming this is a Bookends 9 database. If it is not, tell me and I'll tell you what file type to set it to -- do NOT use BEDN if it's a Bookends 8 database).
Jon
Sonny Software
Worked!
Hi Jon,
That did the trick--FileType is a neat little app. And you are right--searching the DB is very fast. When I used EN, I got used to typing in a search then going to get something to eat--by the time I got back, the search was done.
Joe
That did the trick--FileType is a neat little app. And you are right--searching the DB is very fast. When I used EN, I got used to typing in a search then going to get something to eat--by the time I got back, the search was done.
Joe