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From: Edward on 8 Mar 2010 07:59
Andrew wrote:
> Robert Neville wrote:
>> "Andrew" <andrew(a)jkl.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Did you look at your individual Q system to see if what you say is
>>> true? Do YOU have an files other than .qdf that are being created
>>> and/or updated
>>> since migrating to 2010, assuming you did. Well, I am not sure what
>>> may
>>> have heard is true. I don't.
>>>
>>> See
>>> http://quicken.intuit.com/support/articles/data-file-management/data/7497.html
>>> . No more qel files.
>>>

I don't have any recently created qel files. It is strange that
Quicken's 2010 Validate program would state that my qel file was corrupt.
From: Robert Neville on 8 Mar 2010 10:00
"Andrew" <andrew(a)jkl.com> wrote:

>Robert - I guess I did misinterpret what you were saying. I haven't a clue
>as to why zip files are suddenly being discussed into your reply to me; they
>never came up before.
>
>The OP asked about Q 2010 not using qel files anymore which is true. They
>don't. That was my comment and reference back to the original question.
>But if your reply helped the OP with additional information, that's all that
>counts.


When Intuit went to a single QEL file, they most likely did not change any of
the internal file structures. All they did was combine all the separate files
inside a single wrapper file. The wrapper file used the same QEL extention as
previous versions, but now contains all the individual files.

By doing this, Intuit doesn't need to change any of the internal code that uses
the individual files. They just add a bit of code that opens the single QEL file
and sets up pointers to all the internal files inside.

The sloppy part of the coding is that the error messages still refer to the
internal file names, not the QEL wrapper file.

The easiest way to visualize this is to look at how ZIP files work. There's a
single ZIP file, but inside there can be as many individual files as you like.
Many programs can access the files inside a ZIP file with you having to unzip
beforehand.

An example of this are Firefox xpi addin files. If you rename the xpi extention
to zip and open it, you'll see all the individual files.
From: Andrew on 8 Mar 2010 13:22
Robert Neville wrote:
> "Andrew" <andrew(a)jkl.com> wrote:
>
>> Robert - I guess I did misinterpret what you were saying. I haven't
>> a clue as to why zip files are suddenly being discussed into your
>> reply to me; they never came up before.
>>
>> The OP asked about Q 2010 not using qel files anymore which is true.
>> They don't. That was my comment and reference back to the original
>> question. But if your reply helped the OP with additional
>> information, that's all that counts.
>
>
> When Intuit went to a single QEL file, they most likely did not
> change any of the internal file structures. All they did was combine
> all the separate files inside a single wrapper file. The wrapper file
> used the same QEL extention as previous versions, but now contains
> all the individual files.
>
> By doing this, Intuit doesn't need to change any of the internal code
> that uses the individual files. They just add a bit of code that
> opens the single QEL file and sets up pointers to all the internal
> files inside.
>
> The sloppy part of the coding is that the error messages still refer
> to the internal file names, not the QEL wrapper file.
>
> The easiest way to visualize this is to look at how ZIP files work.
> There's a single ZIP file, but inside there can be as many individual
> files as you like. Many programs can access the files inside a ZIP
> file with you having to unzip beforehand.
>
> An example of this are Firefox xpi addin files. If you rename the xpi
> extention to zip and open it, you'll see all the individual files.

OK - I gotcha. I didn't understand the context of your original zip file
reference in your post. I understand now why you are saying that.

That's an interesting way of doing it, assuming one can indeed keep the
'bundle' completely together and not expose the pieces to the end user.
(Which as you allude to is what might be happening here).

Just for my own curiosity (I used to be a programmer in the good old days),
is this a common technique do you know (I know you referenced Firefox); why
I ask if if one has the set 'opened', and abnormally crashes, I just wonder
about the integrity of the original set of files that might not be able to
be rebuilt? Or perhaps nothing is 'hardened' back to disk until a complete
unit has been reassembled under the covers so the worse that would happen is
all the transactions etc. since the last hardening to disk would be lost.
Just seems to me that one is inviting data integrity issues unless you've
got a LOT of recovery code in there!


--
-------------------------------------------------------------
Regards -

- Andrew


From: Robert Neville on 8 Mar 2010 19:44
Robert Neville <dont(a)bother.com> wrote:

Now, I've managed to confuse everyone by mixing QDF and QEL. Text below edited
for correctness.

>When Intuit went to a single QDF file, they most likely did not change any of
>the internal file structures. All they did was combine all the separate files
>inside a single wrapper file. The wrapper file used the same QDF extention as
>previous versions, but now contains all the individual files.
>
>By doing this, Intuit doesn't need to change any of the internal code that uses
>the individual files. They just add a bit of code that opens the single QDF file
>and sets up pointers to all the internal files inside.
>
>The sloppy part of the coding is that the error messages still refer to the
>internal file names (like QEL), not the QDF wrapper file.
>
>The easiest way to visualize this is to look at how ZIP files work. There's a
>single ZIP file, but inside there can be as many individual files as you like.
>Many programs can access the files inside a ZIP file with you having to unzip
>beforehand.
>
>An example of this are Firefox xpi addin files. If you rename the xpi extention
>to zip and open it, you'll see all the individual files.
From: Robert Neville on 8 Mar 2010 19:48
"Andrew" <andrew(a)jkl.com> wrote:

>Just for my own curiosity (I used to be a programmer in the good old days),
>is this a common technique do you know (I know you referenced Firefox); why
>I ask if if one has the set 'opened', and abnormally crashes, I just wonder
>about the integrity of the original set of files that might not be able to
>be rebuilt? Or perhaps nothing is 'hardened' back to disk until a complete
>unit has been reassembled under the covers so the worse that would happen is
>all the transactions etc. since the last hardening to disk would be lost.
>Just seems to me that one is inviting data integrity issues unless you've
>got a LOT of recovery code in there!

That's a great question. I suspect there isn't a lot of extra protection for the
combined file. The saving grace is that the data saved in some of the aux files
were things like stock history pricing, home inventory records, transaction
attachments and the like. Stuff that needs to be sync'd is probably all in a
single sub file.
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