[comp.databases] Ingres journal files and Tech support quality

manatt@lll-winken.ARPA (Doug Manatt) (09/15/87)

	I am using RTI's Ingres version 5.0/03.  (5.0/04 is out, but I keep
getting letters advising me that it contains serious known bugs.)  I would 
like to be able to depend on its journaling facility to allow me to create an
audit record of activity in certain tables.  But since we started using 
ingres in 1982 the journal files seem to become corrupted about once every 2
months, this leaves them in a state which ingres's journal reading utility
AUDITDB (Actually RECOVERDB) cannot interpret.  Has anyone else tried this
and if so what sort of success have you had?  Does anyone know the structure
of the journal files so I could write a simple utility that might help me
interpret the journals or make audits without RTI's utility?  As it is I lose
the audit information from the time of the corruption until I reinitialize the
journaling system.  What I expect is that Ingres should be able to either 
write uncorrupt journals, or the AUDITDB utility should read, diagnose, and
recover from corrupt records in a journal log.  What I would settle for is
the ability to go into the journal file and surgically remove the corrupt 
records to allow the recovery of all data passed that point in the journals.

	Can anyone please help.  RTI Tech support is of little help, their
recommendation is to reinitialize the Journaling system and go on with 
business as usual, after all it doesn't happen very often.  This is what 
results from support organizations which are completely separate from the
product engineering teams.

					Doug Manatt
					Lawrence Livermore Lab
					(415) 422-7257