All,
I am tossing around some ideas for doing on the fly data backup to an
SD/Flash memory card. Our product is going to be hosted on a palm device
(m515 or Tungsten). The device is going to be mounted inside of an
establishment, that most likely will not have a computer (and the employees
most likely won't know how to use one, so hot sync is out). It is going to
be collecting data that will be stored in various databases on the palm
device. I am thinking about mirroring every piece of data that we collect
on an SD card as we collect it. I know that I cannot write to an SD card
using the Data Manager, but I can open a file using the VFS Manager. So
what I had in mind was creating a binary file large enough to hold a
pre-defined maximum number of fixed size records and every time a record
gets added to the database on the palm unit (in user storage) I would mirror
the binary chunk inside the file on the SD card. I have multiple databases,
so I would need to have anywhere from 2 - 5 file handles open at one time.
The largest single record being written at any one time will probably be
less than 100 bytes, so I am assuming (I know, I know) that the performance
hit won't be that bad. Plus, the device is not going to be interacted with,
so the user is not going to notice if it takes 100us vs. 10us to add the
record.
Please give me your thoughts and suggestions on this method or any other
method that you can suggest. I have not written any code to write to an
expansion card yet, so I am basically on a fact finding mission to see if
what I am planning to do is feasible.
Thanks in advance,
Brad
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