Sonny Software

In the process of using Bookends yesterday I noticed that quite a few attachments were attached to the wrong citation. The title in the citation might say one thing, but the attachment something else. I had not noticed this before but I usually use BE as a repository, as opposed to an oft-used source of references. At any rate I was disturbed so I looked back at some earlier versions of my database. I was shocked. Thus, a database created on Sept 1 2011 appeared intact. A database created (evolved from the Sept file) on Nov 13, 2011 appears to have problems in that some files that were present in Sept are NOT present in Nov. For example, in Sept 2011 I had 6197 references of which 2282 were attached. In Oct 25 2011, I had 5344 refs, of which 1352 were attached. (I should have picked up on that at the time but didn't.) In Nov 2011 I had 5398 refs, of which 1414 were attached. The current db has 6410 refs of which 2589 were attached. On Jan 26, I had 6354 refs in of which 2534 had attachments. This last date (Jan 26) is there because about a year or so ago I thought I had a problem with BE, in which I thought that some files which I thought I had attached had in fact not been. I communicated with Sonny at the time and they told me 'no way', so I decided to keep a periodic tab. Thus, the Jan 26 number. Unfortunately I didn't keep the earlier numbers; however, I did note that each number was greater than the prior number, which makes sense.

I also just looked at the files with attachments to see how many were affected. For each of the databases I have mentioned I looked at about 100 citations. For the files up to Nov, I found very few mis-matched attachments. I don't know why the number of attachments seems to have varied, but at least those that were there were attached correctly. In my latest database (March28) I looked at 104 records and found 28 mismatches. That is unacceptable.

SO, there is a BIG problem here. Databases like BE are supposed to be ultra-stable. People use them periodically, but when they do, they depend on them being accurate.

I did contact Sonny about this and as of now they are a bit baffled. They suggested that I bring it up on the forum to see if anyone else has a similar problem.

THE QUESTIONS:
1. Does anybody else have this problem, or is it something to do with me, and my computer. I always use the latest version of BE, and virtually never delete a reference. If I do, it is one that does NOT have an attached pdf.

2. Now I have to try and reconstruct my database. It looks like I will have to redo about 300 records. Is there any 'simple' way to do this?

Thanks for your help

Don

I have just gone through my entire database. Last night I reattached about 75 files to their proper citation. Today I decided to go through systematically and find out how big a problem I had. I have 552 mis-attached citations to repair. This is out of 2280. Thus, out of 2280 I have at least 25% mis-matched attachments. In a prior communication with Sonny they stated that this problem was very rare and had been resolved. It would have been nice to know that the resolution was only quite recent (Aug 2011). I found this out when I saw on their website, under Update History for 11.1.7 (Aug 28) the statement "Fixed a rare bug where an attachment could be attached to the wrong reference". Of the files that I have looked at today, (can't be totally sure about the others) ALL were added before Sept 6, 2011. So, it appears that the bug was not so rare.
There is not a whole lot I can do about this except to vent my frustration. A database is a valuable thing, and becomes increasingly so over time, so to find out that a lot of what you have really is not that readily available is incredibly frustrating, especially if you are working to a deadline. To be quite honest, if it were not such a PITA, in terms of rebuilding a database and learning a new program, I would switch to Sente in a minute, but I will stick with BE for now.
Some kind of apology might be nice.


Don

We've dealt with this via direct email, but if you want to post this here that's OK. Apology? Well, of course I'm sorry when anyone has a problem with a bug in Bookends. Bugs happen, especially with an app like Bookends that evolves very rapidly with many new releases each year, and you'll see in the Read Me for every single release a list of bugs that were fixed. As I told you in your private email, from your description of the problem I didn't think it was related to that rare bug -- if it were, you would have noticed the attachment was made to the wrong reference much, much sooner. Hopefully it was, though, because that means you won't encounter it moving forward. We fix bugs as soon as they are found and validated (usually the same day) and post updates frequently, mentioning them in the Read Me, the Update History, and linking to them in the Announcement section of this forum, and we'll continue to do that.

Jon
Sonny Software