V11.02 Compact database fails?

[jont]

There is a warning message on the Actinic download support page warning of this issue but it is easily overlooked - it may be worth Actinic considering a pop-up warning before allowing the download to continue advising of the compact issue.

[jont]

I took off the socket at one end of an extension lead the other day as I needed to feed it through a very small gap between furniture but had completely forgotten to unplug the other end from the wall - I was very quickly served with a rather dramatic reminder to pay more attention to what I was doing!

I once wired a light into the loft space off the back of the ceiling light in the bedroom beneath with the light on to provide extra illumination to see what I was doing!!

I have also placed phone cable wires onto my tongue up a telegraph pole to check which were live after an excavator dragged the wires down - good job I had my arm through the rungs.

Don't try these at home children or we will be compacting your remains into a 6 foot box!

[leehack]

You can't build software for the masses IMO and have rules in place to cater for the very small minority with 6 sites who need to swap between them, the compaction takes so much time because it is so long in between you doing it. Try compacting what you call a long database to compact, work on it for half hour and then try again, you will see the point.

Forced compaction should be without question a standard setting, hidden deep away in the guts of the software, whilst also still allowing exceptional circumstances such as Chris's to switch this off. Even then if i had 6 sites, there is no way i would manage them all on one PC, i'd have at least 3 machines, have the 3 busiest sites on the separate machines plus a less busy one.

One final point, apart from people switching sites which you cannot seemingly do without crashing the software anyway, when you close actinic, you are saying 'i'm done for the day, look after yourself, i'm off to the pub', why on earth would you not want a 'forced situation to put the database in the very best condition for the next day'.

If multi-site is the issue, that's 5% of the userbase, so put a selective compaction on that version, a forced one on all others if that really is the issue. What's the first thing we say on the forum or the first thing support ask you to do when you have a problem, yep, have you closed down and compacted the database, it's 2012, not 1984.

[jont]

Compacting should be non-optional, requiring a registry hack to disable or make optional (or buried deep). The number of times I am sent ACD files from clients that are massively bloated that are reduced to a 1/5th of their size after compacting beggars belief.

For Business Plus / MulitSite or whatever you wish to call it swapping between sites does not have the option to compact which is fair enough to speedy switching. I myslef run 5 busy sites from the 1 PC and switching is fairly quick.

But there should be the facility at the end of the day when Corrie is about to start or the pint is waiting on the bar to close Actinic and all .mdb files are compacted and all sites are ACD snapshotted (or a selectable list at least) automatically .. this would ensure when closing a multi site install you have a peachy database and everything is backed up.

[leehack]

Maybe you've hit the nail on the head there Jonty, have an 'I am done for the day, all yours Actinic button' as well as a close button. On pressing this, the database compacts and a snapshot is auto taken to a set location. That is software thinking, preventing problems and creating a get out if you do get one, that's what I expect and look for in 2012 personally.