Database audit tool

In the rare event of a database becoming corrupted, Tools > Management > Rebuild will rebuild it.

If we need to analyse a problem in your database then we may ask you to run the audit tool to produce a report. The audit tool does not detect all possible errors; but it does detect some latent problems that may indicate corruption in the past or lead to trouble in the future.

Audit tool	Executable program, 56KB.
	If for any reason you want to download using the FTP protocol instead of the usual HTTP, press the symbol next to the description of the file you want. Some firewall configurations may need adjusting before you can use FTP.

Click on the link above to download and save the file audit.exe. Your web browser may display security warnings as you do this because audit.exe is an application program: you will have to accept these warnings in order to download the file.

Operating instructions

Open a Command Prompt window in Windows. The basic command line to type is

audit database.fil

where you replace "database.fil" with the name of the database file you want to check. The database must not be in use when you do this.

If audit.exe isn't in the current directory then you need to give the full path name instead of the single word "audit". If your database file isn't in the current directory then you need to give the full path name and not just the filename. Finally, if a path name contains spaces then you need to put quotation marks round it. Thus the simple command line shown above could expand into something like

"C:\My Downloads\audit.exe" "C:\Photo Index.fil"

Image and object fields

The audit tool can check that all images and objects are present and that references to them are correct. To do this, it needs to know what image and object fields the database contains (it can't discover this for itself because the information about field types is stored in the format file, and we want the audit tool to work without trusting the format file or even requiring its presence).

First, make a list of the internal field numbers of all image and object fields. To do this:

Edit the native format.
Double-click on each image and object field in turn.
You will see the internal field number at the bottom right-hand corner of the field's Properties page.

Then type the field number(s) at the end of the audit.exe command line:

audit database.fil 3 27 28

The audit report

If the audit tool finds nothing wrong then it says nothing and returns to the command prompt. Otherwise it outputs a report, which contains technical information and will not mean much to you. If you want to send us the report then you need to output it to a text file and send us the text file. For example:

audit database.fil >report.txt

will create a text file called report.txt. We also recommend that you make a copy of the database file at this time so that you are able to send it to us if we ask for it.

Note

The audit tool was developed for our internal use and its reports are intended to be interpreted by someone skilled in the internal workings of Cardbox. So remember:

Not all errors will be detected by the audit tool.
Not everything reported by the audit tool will necessarily imply that there is something wrong with the database.