On 10/26/2011 8:35 PM, David W. Fenton wrote:
> On 26 Oct 2011 at 9:56, David H. Bailey wrote:
>
>> I read the FAQ and it seemed to indicate that you can download your
>> data as a csv file so you could then import it into whatever
>> spreadsheet or database program you want.
>>
>> The trick is to know when it's going out of business so you can
>> download the most recent complete data, and that doesn't always
>> happen. Sometimes you go to a web-site and it's simply gone without a
>> warning.
>
> What a ridiculous objection!
>
> Obviously, you'd do backups on a REGULAR BASIS, just like you do with
> backups of your local PC. Sometimes you lose data because a backup
> was not run since, say, last night, and you did work today that got
> lost, but the point is that with a regular backup, you can never lose
> more data than the amount entered since the last backup.
>
> And, obviusly, one way of doing that is to do data entry work, and
> when finished download your backup. As long as you never miss skip
> the backup download after data entry, you'd have no possibility
> whatsoever of losing any data.
>

Quite true, but of all the computer users you know, especially 
musicians, how many actually make backups of their data?  Not most that 
I know.

So while to you it's a ridiculous objection, to someone who spends 
hours/weeks/days entering the data and forgets to save it back to his 
computer as a CSV file (how many musician computer users do you know 
that would know what to do with a CSV file?) it's something to take into 
account.

It's not like you can simply download your database file -- it's an 
on-line database which doesn't have a desktop component.

If you think it's a great idea and there's no likelihood of lost data, 
then fine.  Personally, if I'm going to enter data into a database, it's 
into a program I have installed on my own computer, with my own backups 
of the native data files, not CSV files.

I'm just trying to point out potential pitfalls, and with the way most 
computer users never back up their data, it's a serious potential 
pitfall.  Or not, since apparently you think all computer users are gods 
of the backup and would never have a chance to lose their data when the 
online database goes away.

-- 
David H. Bailey
[email protected]
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