HomePatrol Extreme Questions

[tamnj1]

Hello,

On Monday evening when I up-date the master data-base on my Home patrol from Radio Reference is the up-date also up-dating my favorites or sub data-bases for specific areas?

Todd Mc Govern

 

[spooney]

NO. It only updates the Master Database. Favorite Lists have to be updated manually.

 

[torontokris]

if there are no changes to your area it wont affect you... so yuo dont need to manually update ur favorites lists every sunday, its only if there is a change to the areas / systems that you have programmed in your favs

 

[Viper43]

Actually it's Monday. Uniden starts the download at 6pm Sunday and the updated DB is ready Monday morning around 9am Eastern

 

[Viper43]

Hello,

On Monday evening when I up-date the master data-base on my Home patrol from Radio Reference is the up-date also up-dating my favorites or sub data-bases for specific areas?

Todd Mc Govern

After the update only the main DB is updated. You need to manually move the data to your favorites list. Make certain you have your present favorites backed up though as it will lose any changes you have made!
I find it's best now to copy and paste changes from the main DB to favorites lists if you have the Extreme upgrade or any changes you made will be lost.
This is particularly important when RR data is wrong. I don't want to lose channels that are active even though some DB ADMIN "thinks" something isn't active anymore. This has become a huge issue on the Indy MECA system where they removed a bunch of active channels on the word of on RR user and another site....unfortunately ALL the removed channels are still very active.

 

[tamnj1]

Thanks

Thank you everyone for the valuable inforamtion. This is very helpful!

 

[OCO]

Data changes in the Main DB are not reflected in my Favorites that are subsets? (sound of forehead slap).....
For some reason, I figured that any Favorite I created from the main DB would be linked so that changes would be in the subset also. Normal for a true DBMS, which Sentinel obviously is not. I've searched through most of the threads in the RR Uniden forum and see this was discussed as far back as October of last year, so no surprise to the HP1 crowd that's been around for a while..Oh well. Viper 43's explanation of what to do underscores the real problem:

"After the update only the main DB is updated. You need to manually move the data to your favorites list. Make certain you have your present favorites backed up though as it will lose any changes you have made!.
I find it's best now to copy and paste changes from the main DB to favorites lists if you have the Extreme upgrade or any changes you made will be lost."

So how in a large dynamic statewide system are people handling adds/deletes/changes, especially where they've customized some of the Uniden supplied data ? I may have missed it, but I haven't seen a change summary being supplied with the weekly updates, so I'm not sure how to even know when to update specific Favorites.......

I see the need for a Favorites update utility that'd compare the updated main database to any Favorites that were created from it. It would need to be configurable so you could choose which data elements in each record to protect regardless of main DB changes. And it would need to be smart enough to deal with multi-system Favorites. Probably Gommert could whip this up in his spare time. <grin>..

I wonder if Uniden's original vision was to have everything master DB driven with no changes at the local level other than configuration items that could be tracked in the user profiles. Then, if Favorites were created, updates would be a fairly simple overlay of all systems that were included from the master DB.

 

[BearMan54]

If you go to the data base page & look to your left you will see a blue button "Database Updates" that will tell you what system/channels were last updated....... That's the way I see it anyways......

 

[OCO]

Yup, and just for grins, click on the "MI Livingston" one and tell me what the changes are...Looks to me like something in the Statewide MPSCS system. Five minutes worth of scrolling shows several new TGs, at least I think they're new and not changes..And that change log shows ONE day of changes.
This is not a complaint about the RR database as Uniden pulls the data, reformats it and sends it on to our HP1s..In Uniden's defense, this whole location based programming is a new genre, with to be expected growing pains. Maybe just because I'm an IT guy looking at an IT problem that's been solved years ago in most any DBMS, that I didn't expect "cut n' paste" to be part of a DBMS update process. Computers were supposed to eliminate all this drudgery, remember? (and eliminate paper too). I used to walk into an MSP Post, say "Hi, I'm from the Data Center and I'm here to help you" and immediately duck....The troops didn't believe that, either.

 

[UPMan]

One (but not the only) challenge in updating Favorites Lists automagically is how a program will know whether a difference between the main dB and the entry in the Favorites list is due to an actual change to the main dB or due to the user manually updating some parameter in the Favorites List. It would be quite annoying to find that all the changes to descriptions, location, etc that I made in a Favorites List were wiped out on a weekly basis.

 

[OCO]

Paul:
One possible solution would be a three way compare: Old main/New main/Favorite, if Old and New fields the same and Favorite different, leave it alone or more probably present it to the user for decision..Probably never be able to do a totally "automagic" update.. (love that word, used to hear it all the time).. Thanks for the response, at least I know I'm not totally out in left field...

 

[KB8KOJ]

Paul:
One possible solution would be a three way compare: Old main/New main/Favorite, if Old and New fields the same and Favorite different, leave it alone or more probably present it to the user for decision..Probably never be able to do a totally "automagic" update.. (love that word, used to hear it all the time).. Thanks for the response, at least I know I'm not totally out in left field...

I have to agree with the premise of your post. I don't expect automagic either. But show me what changed especially for locations and systems I care about. It's something that is missing from all scanner software that dumps from RR's stellar dbs. Hey just tag new or deleted TGIDs. I'm not complaining but for the systems I monitor I see several changes every month.... what are they? RR comments show the remarks by db admin. But we are on our own to look for them. I would love to see changes from what was to what is. Have contemplated using visual basic for applications and Excel for this. But end up scouring the web pages with my eyeballs.

You sir, are not alone at all.