Sonny Software

Hi,

I just experienced some weird problem. It is solved but i thought you might want to know anyway: trying to import refs through internet search from LoC repeatedly caused BE to crash (at the moment when the import was done and the "updating lists" message came on the screen). Verifying the database showed no problems. I decided to rebuild it anyway which solved the problem. No idea what happened here but perhaps useful to know.

(something sort of related: i noticed that after the rebuild the original database had shrunk from about 16,7 MB to 11,5 MB, which is quite a lot?)

Gerben

Hi Gerben,

The Verify function is very good, but not perfect. If anyone finds cases like this, where Verify is OK but there is some bad behavior that is fixed by a rebuild or repair, please zip and send me the database. We can then improve the Verify function.

As for size, if you are moving data around a lot, dead space can be left behind. Hopefully, the db engine will improve in the future to minimize this.

Jon
Sonny Software

You mean send the repaired db? Sure i can send it.

Thanks for explaining the size thing, it is not a problem but just made me wonder.

Gerben

Similar thing happened to me. BE crashed repeatedly on attaching a file to a reference. Verify reported no error, but rebuilding solved the problem. And, yes, on rebuilding the database shrunk some, as usual.

This is for me the only remaining bit of uneasiness about BE. As far as features are concerned, I am at piece. But the relative frequency of errors cropping up in the database (compared to EN) and the huge size of the database (compared to the size of the same data in both EN and Sente), plus the cycles of size bloating (and deflating with rebuilds) worry me somehow. I wish those announced works in the db engine would improve efficiency a lot…

The size of the database should be of absolutely no concern -- it's internal housekeeping. Don't worry about it.

As for the errors, they are pretty uncommon, actually, and at this point (9.0.4) are almost always repairable without loss of data. So I wouldn't feel uneasy.

Jon
Sonny Software