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Database upgrade
mschnell:
Hi Exert(s),
I am in a terrible need, as the old "Access" database engine, our TP7 setup (two users) uses hit the 2GB limit and TP is not usable any more.
Since years, we are planning to upgrade to a more recent version of TP using a more recent database engine. I even tried a Server based database (Postgres on a Linux box) but this was hard to set up and in the end a lot slower than the old "Access" stuff.
Unfortunately (according to some discussions in this forum), TP10 does not yet seem to provide a tool to import a TP7 Access type database to an SQLite Database.
Is there any help (other than installing a network server box with MSSQL) ? Either by upgrading to TP10, or by using TP7 with SQLite ?
-Michael
Daan van Rooijen:
> Is there any help (other than installing a network server box with MSSQL) ? Either by upgrading to TP10, or by using TP7 with SQLite ?
TP7 doesn't support SQLite.
If your images are JPG/TIF/PNG, you could use the TP7 IPTC editor to copy your keywords and annotations into the image files. Then create an SQLite3 database in TP10, thumbnail the images and have all this information copied into the database automatically.
Another (experimental) approach would be to use a generic MDB-to-SQLite3 converter to see if that produces a working database. Several converters appear to be available for free when you Google for them. However, before trying that, you would first have to use TP10 to convert your .TD4 database to the current .TPDB8 format (from which you can then convert it to SQLite3), and you would have to create a new SQLite3 database in TP10 and thumbnail a few images so you can examine its structure, and compare the converted database to it to see if all required tables and field definitions are present in the converted database.
mschnell:
> TP7 doesn't support SQLite.
Bad news. I had assumed that after creating an SQLIte database, TP7 would be able to use it's SQL interface to access it.
>If your images are JPG/TIF/PNG, you could use the TP7 IPTC editor to copy your keywords and annotations into the image files. Then create an SQLite3 database in TP10, thumbnail the images and have all this information copied into the database automatically.
The main purpose to use ThumbsPlus is the Galleries. We have hundreds of those. This information never is stored in the image files themselves.
> Another (experimental) approach would be to use a generic MDB-to-SQLite3 converter to see if that produces a working database.
OK. In fact I could do such a tool myself using some programming language that supports SQL access (e.g. Python).
>However, before trying that, you would first have to use TP10 to convert your .TD4 database to the current .TPDB8 format (from which you can then convert it to SQLite3),
I suppose as well .TD4 as .TPDB8 is for the "Access" engine. AFAIK it's not possible to do convert a "close-to full" TP7 "Access" database to TP 10 format, as some additional information will be stored and burst the 2 GB limit.
So I suppose the only way to go is to directly convert the .TD4 database in the correct TP4 SQLite format. I suppose I can do this by creating an appropriate converter that either accesses both databases to do a direct conversion or do a program that reads the text file exported by TP7 and converts it in a text file that can be imported by TP10. (I suppose TP10 does have a text file import, similar to what TP7 has.)
But to do this, I obviously would need to have a documentation about the fields, the databases use in both versions.
Possible but obviously very nasty reverse-engineering: I could create a small database with either version of TP (maybe for TP10 by converting the TD4 to TPDB8), do an export and compare the generated files, and then do a lot of experimenting. I do hope that Cerious does not intend to force me to do this.
What do you think ?
-Michael
mschnell:
BTW. Thanks a lot for you effort helping me. But exactly at this point we already have been several months ago. I did try to convert the - at that time still a lot smaller - database to TPDB8 format and failed.
Of course the TP10 trial period has long since expired, so that I can't do any further experiments :(
Up til now I did not try to get a license for TP10, as it's not given (or even likely) that we will be able to use it.
-Michael
Daan van Rooijen:
> The main purpose to use ThumbsPlus is the Galleries. We have hundreds of those. This information never is stored in the image files themselves.
There is a work-around, but it would probably cost you a full day to do it: Go into each gallery, and use the IPTC editor to assign a unique keyword to all the files inside it. For instance, if the gallery is named 'Cats', you could use the keyword 'GAL-Cats'. Do this for all your galleries.
Then create a new SQLite database in TP10, have it copy the IPTC keywords to the database while it makes thumbnails, then search for all images with keyword 'GAL-Cats' and create a gallery 'Cats' for them. Voila, that's one gallery moved to the new database! (now for all the other galleries..)
(note: to prevent that the timestamp of the image files is updated in Windows when you write to their IPTC headers, be sure to use Options | Preferences | General | 'Retain original file date/time when quick process turning or editing IPTC')
> > Another (experimental) approach would be to use a generic MDB-to-SQLite3 converter to see if that produces a working database.
> OK. In fact I could do such a tool myself using some programming language that supports SQL access (e.g. Python).
> >However, before trying that, you would first have to use TP10 to convert your .TD4 database to the current .TPDB8 format (from which you can then convert it to SQLite3)
> I suppose as well .TD4 as .TPDB8 is for the "Access" engine.
Yes, they're both Access databases, but they have different formats (tables and field definitions).
> AFAIK it's not possible to do convert a "close-to full" TP7 "Access" database to TP 10 format, as some additional information will be stored and burst the 2 GB limit.
Yes, good point.. :(
> But to do this, I obviously would need to have a documentation about the fields, the databases use in both versions.
In the past, I have made a description of the .TPDB8 (MDB) database structure ([link=https://www.dropbox.com/s/hvckzxujqztu1m6/ThumbsPlus-9-database-structure.pdf?dl=0]here[/link]), but I don't have one for the SQLite variety that you need and it's very likely different, because SQLite uses different field types.
For the TP7 .td4 structure, you could examine the file using [link=http://www.alexnolan.net/software/mdb_viewer_plus.htm]MDB Viewer Plus[/link].
> Possible but obviously very nasty reverse-engineering: I could create a small database with either version of TP (maybe for TP10 by converting the TD4 to TPDB8), do an export and compare the generated files, and then do a lot of experimenting. I do hope that Cerious does not intend to force me to do this.
>
> What do you think ?
If the galleries are all you really need, I think I'd go for the tedious approach of using IPTC keywords (in my first paragraph above). It seems the most simple solution and I don't think much can go wrong with it, except that the repetitive job will drive you nuts :-))
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