testing for corruption

[Jeff Harrison]

--- Fairlight <fairlite at fairlite.com> wrote:

> At Mon, Feb 04, 2008 at 05:27:01PM -0800 or
> thereabouts, 
> suspect Jeff Harrison was observed uttering:
> > This is all most people care about isn't it?  I
> would
> > want to keep this very simple at its basic level,
> then
> > people could then use flags for options to do the
> more
> > detailed validity checking.
> 
> Not really?  Well...okay, it's not all -I- would
> care about, but as my
> admins at my ISP would note, I'm not "most people"
> in terms of what I want.
> 
[snip]

> It's not a matter of fixing the problem.  Which,
> honestly, I don't consider
> this kind of problem automation-friendly for fixing.

Exactly, I never proposed to use this to actually fix
the data, just to report that there is a problem in
your data.

>  That's asking for
> trouble when detection alone is not sure-fire.
> 

?? If you had binary data where it wasn't supposed to
be, then you have corruption.  If you have corruption
you need to take further action.  I.E (possibly) get
your computer fixed, stop removing filepro's lock
files, etc.

> Why make it more complex?  Because if you truly had
> a HD dying and a
> segment from the middle of a file got dropped, your
> offsets very probably
> -would- be off.  It's a more serious corruption than
> what you were trying
> to detect, and you're (apparently) saying it's too
> complex to consider.
> That's paradoxical.
> 

You are quite wrong here.  The utility that I am
proposing would detect this problem because binary
information would be in filepro's data area.  It just
would not FIX the problem.

> > I don't care what the cause the of corruption is -
> I
> > keep seeing people ask this list how they can
> check
> > for invalid data in fields - this would fit the
> bill
> > for that, I think.
> 
> That's a mistake--not caring why it was corrupted. 
> Forensically, that is a
> grave tactical error; ignoring the root cause leaves
> you a high probability

When developing software it is important to follow the
KISS principle and not try to be all things to
everyone.  

When I said I didn't care what caused it, you need to
take into consideration the context - for the purposes
of developing this utility, I don't care what caused
it.  Of course if I have a problem I will want to
address the root cause - I also would want to fix the
data - But first I would need to know that there is a
problem in the first place.  That is what this utility
addresses.
  
[snip]

Jeff Harrison
jeffaharrison at yahoo.com

Author of JHImport and JHExport. The fastest and
easiest ways to import and export with filepro. 


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