-aiarchive is it a good thing?

Posted by Admin on 13-Nov-2007 11:02

Hello all, Just a quick update, at the NEPUG meeting this past Feb.

2008, I gave a presentation on AI, included was a how to on how

aiarchive works. Bob Brennan will be posting that PowerPoint soon.

Fascinating how the Progress folks wrote this feature GREAT JOB!!

Message was edited by: Bob Bolduc

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Posted by Admin on 31-Mar-2008 09:06

PowerPoint explains it very well. Would like to see something put together by Progress as an online presentation, if possible, or atleast discussed at Exchange.

Posted by ChUIMonster on 15-Apr-2008 08:59

Yes, I use it and it is A Good Thing.

Particularly if you do not already have good scripts of your own to handle the after imaging process. (I do have such scripts -- but they're UNIX oriented and with smaller scale Windows users I'm finding the built-in features more suitable.)

I do, however, have a complaint. The naming convention stinks. I'd like control over how the files get named. I generally only want the base name and the sequence number. Plus maybe a user supplied reference of some sort. The date and time are, IMHO, just noise. Being able to specify a "mask" with placeholders for various variables like printf() or the formatting for the UNIX "date" command would do the trick nicely.

One other point... "official" PSC presentations are nice. Especially to discuss the gory details of internals that us mere users cannot know about. But PSC doesn't use this stuff in the real world -- if they did they would have a more reasonable file naming convetion ;). I'm personally more interested in the experiences of actual customers with real production systems when it comes to a feature like this. FWIW there is an Exchange presentation on the topic -- OPS-11 (Full disclosure note... Adam & I work together.)

Ok, one last point. The roll-forward process needs some work too. We need to be able to roll forward multiple extents without starting & stopping and going through the redo phase with every extent. And it would be nice if it just skipped over invalid extents. IOW there should be a command along the lines of:

rfutil dbname -C roll forward file-list

or maybe even:

rfutil dbname -C roll forward dir-name

If some of the extents in the file list (or directory) are inappropriate (maybe they're from the wrong db or they were archived prior to the backup that they're being rolled forward against then they should just be skipped (as they would be if done manually and one at a time).

Posted by jmls on 16-Apr-2008 11:34

we also use it. the filename convention stinks

I also concur that a roll forward from directory is a very useful tool to have.

Hey, Tom! I agree with you

Posted by ChUIMonster on 16-Apr-2008 16:05

Pretty soon they'll be calling it a movement...

Posted by Thomas Mercer-Hursh on 16-Apr-2008 16:10

Some kind of movement, anyway ...

Posted by ChUIMonster on 17-Apr-2008 08:05

Now if we could just get someone to set it to four part harmony we'd be getting somewhere

Posted by Thomas Mercer-Hursh on 17-Apr-2008 11:01

With only two singers, that would require Tuvan throat singing or the like ...

Posted by jmls on 17-Apr-2008 14:24

what are you talking about ? We have already formed the PAFFF. (the Popular Archive Filename Freedom Front)

Posted by ChUIMonster on 17-Apr-2008 14:32

I'll bet that I can come up with some pretense or other to get Tom Harris and Rich Banville to join in and that makes 4!

And with enough beer it won't matter how harmonious our singing is! But don't worry, I'll have a camera handy to make sure that the agreement to fix the filenames is properly attested to.

Posted by jmls on 17-Apr-2008 14:38

doesn't the singing get better with more beer ? Soon we could be topping the US charts.

Posted by ChUIMonster on 17-Apr-2008 15:13

Careful, if you keep that up you're going to get this thread shutdown for unsportsmanlike commentary...

Posted by jmls on 18-Apr-2008 10:53

a question: I am using -aiarchive, is there any way of forcing the ai manager to make a switch and copy the ai file ? (keeping the same filename layout)

Message was edited by:

Julian Lyndon-Smith

Posted by ChUIMonster on 18-Apr-2008 12:54

What happens when you manually run:

_rfutil dbname -C aimage new

Posted by jmls on 18-Apr-2008 14:58

well, I never. It worked.

Thanks!

This thread is closed