Why do we have to compact the database, what makes them bloat ?

I would like to thank Jonathon at P Squared Technical for helping me out this week, I tried to compact our database when Autotrack crashed every time I tried to schedule, Thanks very much, now we are back on track !!

I have noticed that Autotrack is very slow to open, but does now schedule in a flash !

until P Squared compacted the databases scheduling and updating the playlist info would take 45 minutes !

Can P Squared or anyone tell us what makes the database get so big at times ?

does compacting do a similar job to defragging ?? How can we stop it bloating in the future and would V4 help with the bloating ?

I look forward to every ones replies as I like to understand why we need to do this more ;-)

Regards,
Paul Moore

HitMix Radio
0792 858 1075

This Microsoft link explains more about Access database corruption:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/209137

...under the section "Typical Causes of .mdb File Corruption".

The good news is that Myriad Playout v4 is not susceptible to these problems as it uses Microsoft SQL Server for the database, instead of Access.

John
Development Team
Broadcast Radio

Thank you, I shall read this in depth at some point, Does anyone use an alternate to P Squared's emergency recovery tool?

Regards,
Paul Moore

HitMix Radio
0792 858 1075

You can also do it from within P Squared Myriad Manager on the Database Tools menu.

You can also do *some* of the repair by opening the .MDB file in Microsoft Access, but this will not necessarily fix all problems.

John
Development Team
Broadcast Radio

Ive noticed today that less than a week Autotrack takes 3 attempts to open and run, third time opens fine,

and playlist updating is back to a long time.

There must be something going on that we are unaware of in the background that is causing this to happen,
we have only had 2 Myriad crashes this week, surely that can't have caused it ?

Thanks for the info on the DB, I will read this weekend.

Regards,
Paul Moore

HitMix Radio
0792 858 1075

We have been getting runtime error 3709 and the message search key was not found in any record. I have asked for some help from Tech support.

No, we never get any messages, Autotrak goes through the motions of scheduling, then crashed before it actually sent them to Myriad.

as I say, it works, but just takes a few attempts now to open autotrack, the programme usually now hangs 2 or 3 times, then seems to work fine after that.

Regards,
Paul Moore

HitMix Radio
0792 858 1075

Hi Guys,

By far the most common causes of database corruption are faulting network devices and faulting workstations. Faulting network devices effect connections to the database files to be dropped mid write leaving a partial/corrupted entries, faulting machines frequently have a similar effect.

With this in mind I would recommend that the systems and networkconfigurations/devices and scrutinised and any faults are resolved. 

Hope this helps,

John-Michael

I will double check all our networking but we have the fastest possible pcs in all our studios
which have just been rebuilt a few months ago.

All our pcs run SDD's which have a very fast write speed and our network is a 1GB network, so sped etc isnt an issue.
perhaps something somewhere else has caused this problem.

we will keep our eye's on it.
Thanks for all the comments.

Regards,
Paul Moore

HitMix Radio
0792 858 1075

Question: Has anyone else had their schedule database get so big after scheduling that it is so big Myriad can't find it ?
this week, we had to take a copy from our backup and re-send the schedule to get Myriad backup and running.....any ideas ?

Regards,
Paul Moore

HitMix Radio
0792 858 1075