[Xerte-dev] Re: Lost Data

Thu Feb 6 11:15:50 GMT 2014

Or change the publish message? e.g. you only need to click yes to commit
your changes to the versions others will see. Again I wonder if we change
the publish reminder for all we'll get a lot of enquiries saying I've made
changes but my learners aren't seeing them. Again seems like changing for
all when this is a rare and minority issue.

Agreed it's probably not the best idea to alert users to a problem that is
so intermittant.

I think we have had a broken xml problem in previous versions (occasionally)
and it certainly seems like connectivity problems can cause this judging by
the problems Alistair had but this lost pages without broken xml issue ssems
slightly or completely different.

I still wonder if it's tab nav and/or tab nav+ related too - were the
examples you've seen using those pages?

From: xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Julian Tenney
Sent: 06 February 2014 10:49
To: For Xerte technical developers
Subject: [Xerte-dev] Re: Lost Data

I'm also wary of suggesting we might have a problem that we might not
actually have! Most users aren't doing any funky html stuff, so I don't
think most users are at risk, if there is something not escaping properly.
Also, most users aren't on 2.1, which is where I think this problem might be
(we've never seen it before 2.1) and even if we add some safety code, there
will be a lot of older installs out there without it.

One thing that I wonder is whether to remove the 'do you want to publish'
dialog, because people just get in the habit of saying 'yes' and then
over-write the data.xml with the duff preview.xml, and then you've got no
way back: every single time lost data has cropped up, my first question is
'did you publish the file' and the answer every time is 'yes'. Doh.

From: xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Ron Mitchell
Sent: 06 February 2014 10:15
To: 'For Xerte technical developers'
Subject: [Xerte-dev] Re: Lost Data

Yeah I know what you mean but I was thinking of then prompting users what to
do when it happens. 

But yes a history of edits of some kind sounds good but I can't imagine how
that would work e.g. any single edit could cause the loss 

So thinking out loud perhaps each time a change is made a copy of preview is
also created but up to a max of say 5 then rotated. All users are briefed
that if they ever notice a problem when editing/previewing to stop editing
at that point and notify their sys admin with details.

I wonder if before doing any work on this we need to send a message to the
various mailing lists etc asking for specific details if and when it
happened? Or would that cause a mis-placed concern given this is a rare
occurrence?

I just wish we could reproduce or had a definitive example :-(

From: xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Julian Tenney
Sent: 06 February 2014 09:48
To: For Xerte technical developers
Subject: [Xerte-dev] Re: Lost Data

I think you'd end up backing up the broken file. It's not really a backup we
need, it's a history of the edits?

From: xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Ron Mitchell
Sent: 05 February 2014 16:57
To: 'For Xerte technical developers'
Subject: [Xerte-dev] Re: Lost Data

The problem also is that it's not 100% clear if this happens only after the
change that caused the break. So even if we got hold of a restored backup it
probably wouldn't help.

At some point but probably not until middle of next week I'm going to see if
I can automate my own local back up of the user-files folders on one or two
of the Techdis installations. At the moment the backups are off-server and I
don't have access. If I can automate local backups at least I can quickly
get to the working xml as soon as someone reports this.

Cheers

Ron

From: xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Julian Tenney
Sent: 05 February 2014 16:16
To: For Xerte technical developers
Subject: [Xerte-dev] Re: Lost Data

No idea. In the case here the html was all escaped in CDATA, being part of
the main page text - I wrote it to do some custom stuff, which involved
adding a custom button to each page to display a transcript for narration
and a couple of other things. Once I'd sorted it out, I made a prototype and
gave it to the author to duplicate, with a set of pages set up to duplicate
so she could crack on with the content quickly. I didn't experience any
problems myself.

I suspect in both cases, the user has limited html skills. They could easily
have left a tag unclosed, or an attribute without a quote, the sort of thing
that I'm (a bit) less likely to do.

From: xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Smith, John
Sent: 05 February 2014 16:10
To: For Xerte technical developers
Subject: [Xerte-dev] Re: Lost Data

Hi,

I suspect that the custom HTML is your best link to reproducing this.
something in there has probably caused the nodes not to load properly into
the Flash editor and then when it was written back out those nodes were then
overwritten. This is the problem with mixing XML and HTML, unless its
properly wrapped in CDATA blocks. 

Do you have any clue as to what was in the HTML?

Regards,

John Smith

Learning Technologist

School of Health & Life Sciences

Glasgow Caledonian University

From: xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
[mailto:xerte-dev-bounces at lists.nottingham.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Julian Tenney
Sent: Wednesday, February 05, 2014 3:59 PM
To: For Xerte technical developers (xerte-dev at lists.nottingham.ac.uk)
Subject: [Xerte-dev] Lost Data

Hi,

Just wondering if anyone else has experienced the same data loss we had here
last week, and that was reported on the Xerte list yesterday. In both cases,
the user reported 'lost pages'. Looking at the xml it was intact, with a
closing </learningObject> tag: that's the first time I've ever seen data
loss with a valid xml file left over (I would expect it to truncate at the
point the file broke, and safety code should stop that then saving, right?)

Maybe it's just coincidence, but I'm a bit worried there might be a problem
we don't know about causing data to get lost. In the case reported here, I
don't suspect (highly) user error (it's always a possibility). In the case
on the Xerte list I'm less certain. I've asked for more info, but none has
been forthcoming.

Obviously we need to try and reproduce it if possible, or put in place some
sort of safety mechanism. I did notice that both had some custom HTML going
on in the code. Any ideas or insight?

Julian

This message and any attachment are intended solely for the addressee and
may contain confidential information. If you have received this message in
error, please send it back to me, and immediately delete it.   Please do not
use, copy or disclose the information contained in this message or in any
attachment.  Any views or opinions expressed by the author of this email do
not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Nottingham.

This message has been checked for viruses but the contents of an attachment
may still contain software viruses which could damage your computer system,
you are advised to perform your own checks. Email communications with the
University of Nottingham may be monitored as permitted by UK legislation.

Glasgow Caledonian University is a registered Scottish charity, number
SC021474

Winner: Times Higher Education's Widening Participation Initiative of the
Year 2009 and Herald Society's Education Initiative of the Year 2009.
http://www.gcu.ac.uk/newsevents/news/bycategory/theuniversity/1/name,6219,en
.html

Winner: Times Higher Education's Outstanding Support for Early Career
Researchers of the Year 2010, GCU as a lead with Universities Scotland
partners.
http://www.gcu.ac.uk/newsevents/news/bycategory/theuniversity/1/name,15691,e
n.html

This message and any attachment are intended solely for the addressee and
may contain confidential information. If you have received this message in
error, please send it back to me, and immediately delete it.   Please do not
use, copy or disclose the information contained in this message or in any
attachment.  Any views or opinions expressed by the author of this email do
not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Nottingham.

This message has been checked for viruses but the contents of an attachment
may still contain software viruses which could damage your computer system,
you are advised to perform your own checks. Email communications with the
University of Nottingham may be monitored as permitted by UK legislation.

This message and any attachment are intended solely for the addressee and
may contain confidential information. If you have received this message in
error, please send it back to me, and immediately delete it.   Please do not
use, copy or disclose the information contained in this message or in any
attachment.  Any views or opinions expressed by the author of this email do
not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Nottingham.

This message has been checked for viruses but the contents of an attachment
may still contain software viruses which could damage your computer system,
you are advised to perform your own checks. Email communications with the
University of Nottingham may be monitored as permitted by UK legislation.

This message and any attachment are intended solely for the addressee and
may contain confidential information. If you have received this message in
error, please send it back to me, and immediately delete it.   Please do not
use, copy or disclose the information contained in this message or in any
attachment.  Any views or opinions expressed by the author of this email do
not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Nottingham.

This message has been checked for viruses but the contents of an attachment
may still contain software viruses which could damage your computer system,
you are advised to perform your own checks. Email communications with the
University of Nottingham may be monitored as permitted by UK legislation.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.nottingham.ac.uk/pipermail/xerte-dev/attachments/20140206/7c5484d8/attachment-0001.html>