I was poking around on my WIndows system today and discovered something interesting…
If I have HAMRS opened and it displays my list of logbooks, then I open a second instance of HAMRS by mistake, the second one shows NO logbooks in the list.
Oddly, though, the second instance allows me to create a new logbook, save it, etc.
But then if I close both instances, and open a fresh HAMRS log, only the logs in the first instance are available. The second set of logbooks is nowhere to be found.
This clearly doesn’t explain loss of logbooks on an iPad, but perhaps those having problems in Windows have two instances of HAMRS open at the same time and are making entries into the second one, then after closing / rebooting / etc. those logs are no longer available. That might explain the occasional loss of data. Maybe the first instance takes ownership of the database and the second one can’t access it… so it becomes a permissions issue.
IMHO the best preventive measure would be to disallow multiple instances of HAMRS, if the developmental environment allows this. It is pretty easy to accidentally open two instances if you happen to miss the version already open in the Windows task bar at the bottom of the screen.
On any of the other operating systems–including the iPad–is it possible the database file somehow inadvertently gets “locked” at some point and prevents HAMRS from saving to it? Is there a way for the code to verify database read/write access before it attempts to write to it?
Something for @Jarrett to consider as he troubleshoots the data loss problems.