Catalog Management window

[Joel Goodman]

I've noticed that I have to open the Catalog Management window twice to access the Active Catalogs checkboxes. The first time I open it the list of catalogues does not appear. I close and reopen it and it does.
Happened twice on two different Win 10 PCs running Beta 5.

I discovered this because my laptop does not automatically connect to my NAS upon restart. So when I run PM6 the catalogue, stored on the NAS, is not available and the search option is unresponsive until I reconnect to the NAS drive. That's fine but I'm wondering if there's a way to more elegantly let users know why it's not working? EG if the search box were greyed out and it said "No active catalog available/selected" that'd point towards the Catalog Management window which, in turn, could then indicate catalogues which are "OFFLINE" and "ONLINE".

Thanks.

[Kirk Baker]

Joel,

I've noticed that I have to open the Catalog Management window twice to access the Active Catalogs checkboxes. The first time I open it the list of catalogues does not appear. I close and reopen it and it does.
Happened twice on two different Win 10 PCs running Beta 5.

I discovered this because my laptop does not automatically connect to my NAS upon restart. So when I run PM6 the catalogue, stored on the NAS, is not available and the search option is unresponsive until I reconnect to the NAS drive. That's fine but I'm wondering if there's a way to more elegantly let users know why it's not working? EG if the search box were greyed out and it said "No active catalog available/selected" that'd point towards the Catalog Management window which, in turn, could then indicate catalogues which are "OFFLINE" and "ONLINE".

Isn't the performance of the catalog (database stored on the NAS) really poor?  Even if your images are on a NAS, the catalog can be local to your computer.

But yes, some sort of error message is needed for this condition.

-Kirk

[Joel Goodman]

I've been really impressed with the speed. I haven't compared to if stored locally but having it on the NAS means I can connect from more than one computer without having to maintain multiple databases or keep a redundant host computer running. In those terms it works exactly as I'd hoped all these years

[Kirk Baker]

Joel,

I've been really impressed with the speed. I haven't compared to if stored locally but having it on the NAS means I can connect from more than one computer without having to maintain multiple databases or keep a redundant host computer running. In those terms it works exactly as I'd hoped all these years

Be careful with that.  You cannot have more than one computer connected to that catalog stored on the NAS at the same time or data loss will occur.  As long as only one computer is accessing the catalog you should be fine.

-Kirk

[Joel Goodman]

Oh?! Just being connected from more than one location is a risk, even if making no edits? What sort of data loss? Damage to the database or to the files themselves?

If so, could you introduce a way of locking out the risk element? Say a flag in the database to limit the number of simultaneous connections?

I'd like to understand what the exact risk factors are.

[Kirk Baker]

Joel,

Oh?! Just being connected from more than one location is a risk, even if making no edits? What sort of data loss? Damage to the database or to the files themselves?

If so, could you introduce a way of locking out the risk element? Say a flag in the database to limit the number of simultaneous connections?

I'd like to understand what the exact risk factors are.

There should only ever be one instance of Photo Mechanic Plus accessing a catalog.  SQLite has no provision for multiple access, so there is no flag to set.

-Kirk

[Joel Goodman]

Thanks Kirk
I'm going to see if it's possible to move the database to a folder on my NAS and set access permissions for only one user to access the folder at a time. I think the permissions options offered might achieve this.
Out of interest, is the potential damage to the database file - which I can rebuild at worst - or to the actual image files, which I'd have to restore from a backup?

[Kirk Baker]

Joel,

Thanks Kirk
I'm going to see if it's possible to move the database to a folder on my NAS and set access permissions for only one user to access the folder at a time. I think the permissions options offered might achieve this.
Out of interest, is the potential damage to the database file - which I can rebuild at worst - or to the actual image files, which I'd have to restore from a backup?

Just the database, though having multiple applications writing to the same file is always a recipe for disaster whether you use our software or someone else's.

-Kirk