Kepub Annotation

[johnnyb]

Originally Posted by mathil

Well, not quite spontaneously, at least not in my experience -- you do have to do something wrong, as an user, to cause a corruption.

That is of course true, you'll always have to do something. But like you said sometimes it’s not even clear that you did “something”. I think if they were clever they would either allow for online backup of all data or at least get rid of that monolithic database. Having databases that can potentially grow in size beyond what the device and rest of the OS can actually handle has always been a dumb idea (I'm looking at you, Windows registry).

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by johnnyb

That is of course true, you'll always have to do something. But like you said sometimes it’s not even clear that you did “something”. I think if they were clever they would either allow for online backup of all data or at least get rid of that monolithic database. Having databases that can potentially grow in size beyond what the device and rest of the OS can actually handle has always been a dumb idea (I'm looking at you, Windows registry).

So what should they use? Flat files? Or read the books files each time the want to show the data? Either way leads to madness and slow systems. The current database is not good. It desperately needs a cleanup to get rid of tables and columns no longer needed. But it is backwardly compatible with a lot of firmware versions and would probably need a large rewrite. And that's something that no company will pay for without a really good reason.

[shalym]

Originally Posted by davidfor

So what should they use? Flat files? Or read the books files each time the want to show the data? Either way leads to madness and slow systems. The current database is not good. It desperately needs a cleanup to get rid of tables and columns no longer needed. But it is backwardly compatible with a lot of firmware versions and would probably need a large rewrite. And that's something that no company will pay for without a really good reason.

I don't know...how do other e-readers do it? Did Sony use a database system that was prone to corruption? What about Nook? Kindle? Tolino?

Shari

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by shalym

I don't know...how do other e-readers do it? Did Sony use a database system that was prone to corruption? What about Nook? Kindle? Tolino?

I have no idea. I have never used any of these devices. I know that the Sony's used a database, but I don't know they had problems with it.

[johnnyb]

Kindle is using a much leaner general database but actually stores a lot of info in separate files next to the books. That way, even of the database needs to be rebuilt essentially nothing of value to the user disappears (reading times stats and search indices, but they are easily rebuilt). Another plus: syncs can be almost instantaneous and do not depend on one big process.
Of course the files have to be loaded individually upon opening the book, yet their OS is faster, more responsive and still more reliable.

[PeterT]

I actually don't think the OS is faster, more responsive or reliable. The APPLICATION might be but not the OS.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

[johnnyb]

Originally Posted by PeterT

I actually don't think the OS is faster, more responsive or reliable. The APPLICATION might be but not the OS.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

Ok, fair point