By Peter Jarrett - Monday, December 5, 2005 3:16:44 PM
In Scoop v1 and Scoop v2, most users stored their Scoop Database on the local Scoop Server (\"Scoop Capture\" in v2 and v3) itself.
They also tended to store the audio on the same computer becuase hard drives were expensive and News audio tends to take up a lot of space.
The down side to this was the Scoop Edit computers therefore usually had to connect to 2 different computers to run - the Scoop Capture PC and also the main Server (usually Myriad) for the rest of the audio. If either have to be rebooted (say for a software or Operating System update) then the news users have to stop work - not an ideal situation.
Scoop v3 uses a totally different type of database that is quite a bit more data intensive. This is because it can now store much more information and this needs to be rapdily searched. Also, because modern servers are much larger, there is now no need to store the audio in another location - it can all be stored on the one main server (if you have one of course!)
Because of this we strongly recommend that the Scoop Database is stored on a dedicated File server (usually running Windows 2000 Server or Windows 2003 Server). Running Windows XP Pro or Windows 2000 Pro doesn't count because they are still 'desktop' operating systems and aren't optimised for serving out files the same way as proper Server Operating Systems.
If you store the data on the Scoop Capture computer itself, you will also find that when Scoop Capture v3 scans remote Web and FTP sites and processes audio the computer has to work very hard and becomes sluggish. On all but the fastest computers, this means that computers running Scoop Edit briefly pause because they are unable to retrieve all the data they need from the database. Once the scan is complete, the computers all speed back up again.
We are therefore unable to provide support for system slowdowns when your database is stored on the same computer that is running Scoop Capture. May users may not notice a problem at all, but it's worth bearing in mind.
Please note that none of this affects what operating system you should use to actually run Scoop Capture on - the operating system of choice is still very much Windows XP Pro Service Pack 2 
More information about our Software Support Policy can be found at http://support.psquared.net/softsupport.htm
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