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rhills
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Post by rhills »

Well, wasn't that an interesting ride?

Firstly, I'd like to apologise to those of you who have suffered through the prolonged outage.

For those of you who are just relieved to have your forum back and don't really care what happened, feel free to seek more interesting stuff elsewhere. Still here? OK, here's the potted history...

We believed we had done everything to ensure a smooth changeover to the new forum platform and we are still none the wiser about what exactly went wrong behind the scenes at gConverters. All we know is that after a prolonged testing process produced an acceptable outcome with the data snapshot we took back in early November, when we inspected the outcome of the conversion after I closed the forum on 9 December, we were horrified! A combination of new errors and old ones that we'd thought had been fixed greeted us.

We gave gConverters direct and specific feedback about what the problems were and after several attempts over the next 48 hours, there was little improvement. It became clear that instead of converting the whole of the new data snapshot using a program they'd developed/refined enduring the testing process, they had plucked out the bits that had changed and attempted to add them to the test conversion. The result was a real mess!

We wrote to gConverters and suggested they really needed to go back and do a complete conversion of the new data snapshot and load it into an empty phpBB forum. They then agreed to do this but have yet to produce any result. Reluctantly, we have decided to abandon this attempt to migrate the forum until the process is better prepared and tested.

We are now planning to do the final conversion to our new phpBB forum by the end of January. Next time, the forum will be off the air for no longer than 24 hours!
Last edited by rhills on Fri, 19 Dec 2014, 04:20, edited 1 time in total.
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Gabz
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Post by Gabz »

thanks for the efforts.
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EV2Go
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Post by EV2Go »

Best laid plans of mice and men... Scripting seldom goes smoothly, even if it work once there is no guarantees that it will work the same a second time, that is the nature of data transfers. Experience is a wonderful teacher.
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Adverse Effects
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Post by Adverse Effects »

they tryed to "update" Image the test conversion?

well you pay $100 you get work for $100, you pay $500 you get $500 worth of work

AKA you get what you pay for
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Johny
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Post by Johny »

How frustrating for you guys Rob. Thanks for the effort this is clearly taking.
rhills
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Post by rhills »

Thanks everyone for the messages of support.
Adverse Effects wrote:AKA you get what you pay for
Yes, you've absolutely nailed it!

I've actually done many complex data conversions in the past and I know well how difficult they can be. gConverters certainly don't charge a lot for their service and we'd felt they must rely on a well-honed process and lots of throughput to make a profit. On the evidence we saw, the former wasn't the case!

I've learned a lot about the data structure of both systems in the process of trying to help gC to debug our conversion so I feel I am well placed to do it myself in the New Year.

Cheers,
Last edited by rhills on Sat, 20 Dec 2014, 06:20, edited 1 time in total.
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EV2Go
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Post by EV2Go »

Well you know the old saying Rob, If you want something done right...
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LauraiMiEV
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Post by LauraiMiEV »

Rob,

Once again you've proven how much easier computers make our daily lives Image

That old love-hate thing we have going with computers will keep on keepin' on. I'm just glad it's you struggling through this upgrade, I've done my share of struggling with computers in the past and can really enjoy not being in the thick of it today!

Have a good Christmas and try to dream of lollipops not data conversions. I, for one, keenly await the January round of conversions to see how impressive you can be!!!
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weber
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Post by weber »

And many thanks to Andrew for making sure his server was still here for us to come back to. Image Thanks Andrew.
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Post by a4x4kiwi »

Thanks to all involved for your continued efforts.

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