Duplicates lost when reorganising catalog tree

[wfl]

We have had this problem several times but this is the worst yet.

When reorganising the tree (moving sections about) we get occasionally an "overflow" type error.

As a result the section we are moving disappears from view and you have to quit and come back in to get it back. However when you do you get an error message telling you that duplicates have become orphaned and have been deleted.

Up to now this has been the odd one or 2 products but now I am working on a revamp that has a major number of duplicates (mainly because it is the only way we can get Actinic to work well with cpc campaigns) and while moving a meaty section that contains all the originals (i.e. the by brand section) it has dumped every single duplicate. THis amounts to about 600 items so far and represents 6 hours work

I have reindexed etc.

[wfl]

I have just discovered that the problem has wiped half of the entire catalog - original products included! I am spitting bullets ATM!

OK so I can go to last nights back up for product but my entire day's reorganisation will have been blown away.

So if I go to back up and start again what is to say that the problem will not reoccur?

[pinbrook]

Woops, i wouldn't like to be in the firing line of those bullets

I noticed the same issue with surf-wax this week, I was adding products which then became duplicates too. I started to get a DB overflow problem too.

Sadly I've haven't had time to go back and revisit. But I have more products to add.

851-HFUA

[leehack]

Ouch, you gotta snapshot every half hour doing stuff like that, you end up with no ass after a weekend if you don't. Close actinic, reopen just to make sure they've gone, i've had somethings reappear when you do this - often a shame though as the laptop has usually had it's flying lesson by then.

[wfl]

Yup I have just burnt the wires to support and they are going to ask a Hungarian.

Fact is though that more than 50% of the data has gone. It didn't just hide the section it wiped the data. OK it may not have wiped it until I exited and / or reopened it.

You can't leave backup on otherwise it will crash every time you exit. So now it is work half an hour, do a snap shot, wait 10 minutes again before you can get back to work? This is b****y ridiculous. OK so I can close it and copy the db every half hour but I ask you - now you can't even move product / sections around safely!

It seems no one has come across this before in Woking - CB told me that they were concerned that we had given up reporting "minor" issues. We had this problem first a couple of weeks back and if Jo has had it there are bound to be others.

I suspect this means the b****y thing won't let us have too many duplicates just like it won't let us have more than 2 or 3 UDVs before preventing us doing a hierarchical export. After all if I could do that I might have been able to get my products back in to this db.

[pinbrook]

if Jo has had it there

I've been 2 staff members down this week (I let them both go on holiday at the same time - big mistake!) Hopefully I 'll find time next week to revisit this and document it properly.

Neither went to Hungary though

[RuralWeb]

It seems no one has come across this before

Ive seen it before when I repaired a site that was showing the error - it seemed to be caused by using user defined references that became too long. When a duplicate was moved it triggered something that chopped off the last couple of digits which then conflicted with products/duplicates with the same reference. As a result Actinic decided to delete the duplicates and the original products.

[wfl]

Hmm.....

I don't know about too long but we certainly have lots of them (amongst other things Norman's multi image) and they apply to just about every product. These are a problem because you can't do a hierarchical export if you have more then just a few - quite simply the UDV bit doesn't work beyond a very few. My guess is that our Hungarian freinds only tried one or two.

CD has confirmed elsewhere today that 8.5.2 will have a fix for the number of UDVs. If this is the same problem (and support did not know of it today) then it had better be fixed in 8.5.2.

Problem is that he also confirmed that it is several weeks away. I was hoping to at least have seen the beta of it by now. Believe me if I had I would be designing in it already.

[RuralWeb]

I don't know about too long but we certainly have lots of them

The ones I had were not that long but that was definately the problem.

[wfl]

So, it looks like UDVs and Duplicate Products strike yet again.

Actinic towers have yet another copy of my db but they aren't going to find anyhing there other than possibly some residual aftermath.

AFAIK the problem I had / still have with UDVs in 8.5.1 is that the application simply can't cope with so many "extra" lines when it trys to export.

So my bet is that likewise the application simply isn't capable of handling so many changes at once when there are a lot of UDVs or Dulicates.

[RuralWeb]

So my bet is that likewise the application simply isn't capable of handling so many changes at once when there are a lot of UDVs

Sounds about right - this all started when actinic changed the product ID/reference to allow duplicates on the same page as a product original - maybe they should undo the change!

[wfl]

OMG don't tell them. That will just delay 8.5.2 another 6 weeks

[pinbrook]

ok, i compacted and repaired in Access and then went about adding new products, and creating duplicates. All seemed to go Ok.

[wfl]

Yup I did all of that no problems and we carried on working.

Then one day a week or two down the line down the line when I had forgotten all about it BANG.

The problem occurs intermittently and without warning.

I don't think it is particularly a db fault rather it is a handling bug / shortcoming.

The first couple of times we only moved a small section so we only lost a few duplicates and originals. It wasn't too big a deal so we just put it down to Actinic.

This time it was a very big deal....

As Lee says, now we see a problem, I am going to have to copy the db every hour or so. I can't afford to risk loosing that amnount of work again.

[pinbrook]

Agreed it needs to be looked at... i just wanted to say i don't think i have the same problem, although i remain vigilant