Thursday, August 23, 2007

That Syncing Feeling

Unfortunately things have bogged down. I could blame it on the kid's school starting, Mrs. Skyhound going back to work, various appointments, etc. But the real problem is that the new Sync feature is, well... out of sync.

The Sync feature allows the user to synchronize their data between two computers. The main point of this is so we can easily move our observing preparations onto our laptop to take into the field, and then easily move the results, such as log entries, back to our desktop. It's a sort of non-destructive backup/restore process, that seamlessly merges the data on one computer into the data on another without losing anything in the process.

Unfortunately, doing that is a huge pain in the ass. Actually, since we are talking about multiple databases here: observing lists, images, logs, notes, telescopes, locations, charts, observers, object notes, web links, etc., it's more like a huge pain in the ass times 50.

I originally did the groundwork for this code last fall. In the meantime, I dramatically underestimated how much of it had been completed back then. Not only that, but changes I have made since have to be folded in and it's been a bit like folding bowling balls into a soufflé. Worse yet, I discovered that I had cheated last fall and much of the code didn't really do what I wanted it to do.

** Sigh **

So while the beta test team is hopefully enjoying some time away from SkyTools I am working hard trying to get, well... back in sync.

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