HC to Rev conversion

Jerry Daniels jerry.daniels at me.com
Mon Dec 29 19:04:38 EST 2008


Dale,

Paul is right on the money regarding issues with over 5000 cards.  
There are plenty of ways to deal with your data, however that do not  
necessitate the use of cards. You can use a standard SQL database, a  
"hand-made" database using custom properties, or flat files.

Best,

Jerry Daniels

Host of Rev Mentor
http://www.revmentor.com

On Dec 29, 2008, at 3:40 PM, Paul Looney wrote:

> Dale Pond wrote:
>
> "In the end I do not see any reason to redesign the collection - way  
> too much data for that now. If the HyperSearch stack can be made to  
> work like it did in HC I would be quite happy."
>
> Dale,
> I might as well start with the bad news:
> You will not be able to get what you want with a simple HC/Rev  
> conversion.
> Rev has many virtues but it just does not handle large number of  
> records well - in stack form. We found this out the hard way;  
> operations on large stacks that took a few minutes in HC would take  
> hours (many hours) in Rev. The problems become significant around  
> 5000 cards and became exponentially worse as the number of cards  
> increases.
> The size of large stacks also increase significantly when imported  
> into Rev.
> Big stacks, converted to Rev, take longer to open, longer to save,  
> and longer to close than they did in HC.
> There are other ways to handle this data in Rev (text files come  
> immediately to mind - and they are faster and smaller than stacks).  
> There are many talented people on this list who could help you make  
> this conversion. If you wish to do this work yourself - with some  
> guidance, you might consider a mentoring program using your data  
> (perhaps with the Master Mentor, Jerry Daniels).
> Fortunately the data (the most important part of your collection)  
> could be imported to the new framework via script - there should be  
> minimal manual work required.
> Regarding the "idle" commands: I found them in the HyperSearch stack  
> you posted recently. Idle commands are a bad thing for a variety of  
> reasons and should be avoided (with Rev's ability to send a command  
> at some future time, they just are not needed in Rev.) For example,  
> one place your stack used an Idle command was to periodically  
> compact the current stack; compacting was critical in HC, HC  
> appended data to the file when it was changed and only consolidated  
> the information when the stack was compacted (basically, all of the  
> data in the file/stack was re-written to a new contigueous stack).  
> If this was not done periodically in HC, the stack's directory would  
> loose track of parts of the file - and the stack would become  
> corrupted. Rev does not have this problem - and does not need  
> regular compaction.
> By changing the framework for your information you can eliminate  
> many workarounds that HyperSearch used to accomodate HC. You would  
> get more speed, a more convenient interface, reduced storage  
> requirements, faster backups, more flexible searches, etc.
> I sympathize with your desire to do a simple conversion. When I  
> started with Rev in 2001 I had almost 15 years work in HC-based  
> business systems, used daily by thousands of people - and all "I"  
> wanted was a simple conversion. We tried.
> In the end, it was easier (and better) to rebuild the framework in  
> Rev. The problem ended up being an opportunity.
> Sincerely,
> Paul Looney
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