Sparx Systems Forum
Enterprise Architect => Bugs and Issues => Topic started by: ducatiross on July 21, 2015, 01:47:33 am
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My colleague has suffered a severe data loss today. He has had EA (v.1112) open on his laptop since Friday 17th July and been making changes to his model Friday/Saturday and today (Monday 20th). He has been saving regularly, but kept EA open and not closed it down each day.
When he closed EA today, then restarted it and opened the project, all the changes made since Friday at 10:28 have disappeared. A whole diagram is missing, as are many of the objects he created and used on other diagrams.
I have checked with our IT support and they tell me that no database restores have happened (we use MS SQL Server for our shared repository). I think this is unlikely to be the cause anyway as the time between him closing EA and re-opening it was only a couple of minutes. (not enough for an unrequest restore to have happened !)
Has anyone else had this or something similar ?
I am reluctant to tell him to start using the software until I have a better idea as to why the data has been lost.
Any ideas would be greatly appreciated as this is having a direct delay on our already time-critical project !
thanks
Matthew
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On which repository did he work? Maybe he accidentally worked on a local EAP file copy?
q.
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He has been saving regularly
EA saves regularly (http://www.sparxsystems.com/enterprise_architect_user_guide/12.0/getting_started/save_changes.html) by default.
Diagrams are saved when closed, or you can set an option to auto save diagram changes (http://www.sparxsystems.com/enterprise_architect_user_guide/12.0/projects_and_teams/diagrambehavoir.html).
Perhaps the file is in another location, or file synchronisation software has synced the wrong copy.
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Thanks q and skiwi for ideas. I can confirm that an .EAP file was not used, so it is all against our shared SQL Server repository. We have ticked the 'Auto save' option now, but I don't think this was the problem.
I have also had a backup of the database that was taken on Sunday night restored (as this was before the problem was identified/occurred on Monday), but that has none of the changes done since Friday in it either. Strange.
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If you had auditing turned on you would have had some proof of what had been going on. All we can do is speculate. But any operation you do on a repository (any element CRUD) is directly reflected. In contrast diagram changes are held in memory. If you change a diagram and EA crashes (silently upon quit?!) your diagram changes are lost.
q.
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If it was only the one diagram that was missing, this might explain it but as there are a number of elements that are also missing from the project browser (which were used on multiple diagrams) something else must have happened.
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This is a very strange behavior.
The first thing I would do if I were you would be to check with SQL Query via the Model Search (Edit menu> Model Search) the object that have been created by his username between the time frame you mentionned. To make sure that the object doesn't exists in your repository.
Something like : select * from t_objects where t_object.author like '%Insert Name Here%' and t_object.CreatedDate > '2015-07-17'
Janic
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Good idea Janic. I hadn't tried that.
I have now though and there are only 5 objects created by him up until 10:01 on Friday and nothing after that. The latest modified object by him is at 10:25 that day. Nothing later.
Perhaps the Bermuda Triangle has relocated itself above our office !
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Remember you still deal with computer science. Some still call it voodoo.
q.
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Well, the only thing I can say is to recommend to apply some of the very first best pratice for EA : Asks your users to close EA at the end of every day.
Some questions in bulk :
Was your user working onsite or offsite with a remote access to the repository?
Are you using a version controlled repository (like SVN?)?
Janic
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One more question...
Has this user been using "Undo" ?
I have had some seemingly random results from "Undo" along the lines of:
1. Make a mistake
2. Choose "Undo" (Ctrl-Z)
3. See no change
4. Hit "Undo" several times in frustration
5. Note that several other things are now missing
6. Go away and sulk somewhere
>:(
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Thanks for your responses Janic, AndyJ and q.
I asked for a restore of the DB backup made on Sunday night (the day before the objects were 'lost' and looked at that. Interestingly, this restore also had no elements created or modified by this user since Friday 10:25am, depsite work being done all Friday and some of Saturday. The user came into the office to work to connect to the network directly and use EA on his works laptop. He left his laptop on and EA open all Friday, Saturday Sunday and into Monday without closing EA at all, but saving regularly.
All the objetcs were present during his session on Monday morning, then when he finally closed EA and restarted it on Monday lunchtime, the objects were gone. All the work done since Friday at 10:25 was lost.
I am going to raise a bug with Sparx about this.
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Sorry - to answer your questions :-
1. We don't use version control tools at all
2. Undo was not used at any point
There was a lot of sulking !!