I hopefully have some good news on this issue. I was able to get a reply from support this week, and it looks like some progress has finally been made on the issues that showed up at the end of March!
I’ve noticed a big change on my end: My databases seem to suddenly be back in order, where they were a scattered mess before, and I’m having much better luck with the searches for both adding items to the database and to search through the database.
Searching by kana still seems to return some results that only partially match what I searched for, but I’m unsure on whether it was behaving like that originally. I think I’m regardless having better luck with that than I was earlier too. I had many cases during the issues where it didn’t even return the item I was looking for in the search, despite it definitely being in the database, and I have yet to notice that now in testing it out.
Anyway, could you please check again when you get a chance to see if the search is behaving any differently on your end?
@TinyCaterpillar ~ this sounds encouraging. Follow-up question though. What do you mean by: “My databases seem to suddenly be back in order, where they were a scattered mess before” ? Are you saying that are back in some kind of logical order again ? (At least I hope so). Thanks.
Before the issues started, I was very meticulous about keeping my databases’ item order the same as how it shows up in the levels. Furthermore, I use two databases in each course that ‘mirror’ each other, having the same entries, but with different alts for testing in different directions.
Once the issues began, the databases’ order seemed to get completely scrambled. None of the entries were where they were supposed to be, and the ‘mirrored’ databases no longer matched up.
Since the fix though, everything seems to be back to the way it was before the issues started. This is only going by what I’ve seen so far, and I haven’t had a chance to look it over too thoroughly yet, but it was nowhere near correct earlier, so I see it as very promising. The ‘mirrored’ databases seem to match up again as well.
@TinyCaterpillar ~ excellent ! That was what I was hoping to hear. I was pretty much the same as you in terms of ordering items in the levels and databases but once they became mixed up, it was pointless to create any new logical-ordered courses, or add new items to existing courses. I will take a look at my databases and hope they too are back to some semblance of their former selves. Thanks for the potentially encouraging news !
Will do. I took a cursory glance at a few courses that were WIP and the databases are definitely somewhat organized again. Not as haphazard as they used to be displayed (even though they were all bulk added in absolute logical order). I am going to create a new logical ordered course that I had waiting in the wings and see if the ordering holds up. I will post the results.
I bulk added 43 logical based entries (chronological date events in history) into a newly created database. When I reviewed the items, all 43 were still in logical order. I then used the create level function in the editor and changed the number of items to something higher than 43 (so all the items would go into one level). I then previewed the level and all 43 items were still in the original order.
I then bulk added another 11 logical order based entries (with earlier chronological dates) directly into a newly created level - rather than into the database so I could test out both ways to add items (but I did use the same database name). When I previewed the items, they were all still in the same logical order. AND, (drum roll please…) the 11 items were in the same logical order in the database as well, directly after the first 43 items from the first created level.
This is the WONDERFUL way things used to be. None of this was even remotely possible since things went squirrly for the past few months. Looks like someone has cleaned up the database issues BIG TIME !
A gazillion thanks to whoever it was. Hopefully others can test this logic out on their respective databases and get similar results. I am one happy camper now as I had 4 chronological courses sitting in various Excel worksheets waiting to upload, but couldn’t because of the database issues. Looks like I can now.
Forgot to mention, I also tested the logic of adding 600 items to a new level, to see if the database was still skipping every 100th item. It is… So that issue is still in need of repair.
I tested out bulk add in one of my databases as well, and it kept the order for me, too. I’ll be testing things a bit more, but it looks like we can hopefully breath easy on this one now.
First of all: I’m sorry for the terribly late reply - we got married this weekend, so we were a little busy
I tried a quick search and it seems to work again, more or less as good as it did before all this mess happend. There are still some strange results when inputing Hiragana for me, especially if a word is not in the database yet. But the whole search function did really get a little bit more useable. That is really GREAT news. I will try a few more searches and will let you know, if something odd turns up. But for the moment this really seems nice.
Yeah, it has gotten back to almost perfect this week Also most of the database functions are back to normal, even the item and record ordering, even if it’s still only 20 items on a page instead of the 100 it used to be.
The only search issue I still experience is that you can still only search the beginnings of a word.
So for example when searching for “perspektiv” I get a hit for 'ett perspektiv" but ‘ett fågelperspektiv’ or ‘ett grodperspektiv’ won’t show up.
Glad to hear it’s working on your end, too. I am still having to sometimes use two or three of the search fields to find what I’m looking for, due to the strange results with kana, but yes, it’s loads better than it was before, and has certainly become usable for me again. (I can import items nearly twice as fast as before, so I’m enjoying that! )
I do wish they’d go back to 100 items per page, since 20 seems way too small to me, but I suspect that was a deliberate change, so I’m not counting on it.
A little update from my side: There still seem to be some really odd issues, as you said, especially when it comes to Kana imputs.
For example I tried searching for ほうげん and a whole lot of entries showed up, nothing relevant and some that really make me wonder, why they even turned up with that search in the first place. But since I was rather sure that this word should be in the database I tried to search for the Geman translation which did the trick perfectly and just showed mit the entry for ほうげん.
So to make a long story short, the search function is still far from being relaible and I just wanted to let you know and give you a warning - sadly it might still be necessary to double-check your search results.
I really hope they can get that fixed soon…
Your description seems to match my experiences since my last post as well. There are definitely some oddities lingering with the kana search. I was encountering similar things occasionally before all of this, so I’m already pretty accustomed to needing to narrow my searches sometimes with the other fields, but it does seem to be occurring more frequently now.
I’ll usually search by the kanji/English in addition to the kana, unless it gives me a small number of results that contain exactly what I was looking for. Hopefully they’re still tinkering with it (as long as it doesn’t get completely broken again! xD)
Looks like there is a new wrinkle to this long standing database issue. I just uploaded 125 items from an Excel worksheet into a course with 5 levels (one for each of 5 consecutive calendar years of historical dates). The uploading went fine. The items display in consecutive date order in both the levels and the existing database. They seem to test in date order as well (although I haven’t tested all 125 items yet).
The new wrinkle is that the Preview function on each course level is not previewing the items in the order in which it should. There is some kind of disconnect in that underlying logic. It is not really harmful to learning the course, but it is something that should be looked at since it makes it appear that things are not what they should be (chronological order, in my example) and yet they really are. Has anyone else noticed this ? Thanks.
Now that you mention it, I’ve also noticed this, and have actually been encountering it since the issues originally began.
I assumed at the time that it was somehow due to the database entries being in the wrong order, but even now, after the database order’s been fixed, that issue persists.
the database search is not functioning when ading new items… usually, items already present in my own courses appeared in the drop down menu one sees when adding new items. That is definitely ot showing items from my own database, so, I have to use a separate window to see if the item is already present in my course…
So that issue is still in need of repair.
Also most of the database functions are back to normal, even the item and record ordering, even if it’s still only 20 items on a page instead of the 100 it used to be.
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