Multiple DB Sync?

[Vasu Tummala]

Is it possible to sync separate databases through Cloudant? I have two separate databases I use for my Spirits collection (200 items), and another one for my Wine collection (100 items). I’ve had sync working great through Cloudant for my Spirits collection for the past two months, and just recently completed cataloging all my Wine and entering all the data into a separate Wine database.

The Spirits database has one category in it (called Spirits) with three forms: Bourbon/Rye, Scotch, and Rum. The Wine database just has one category (called Wine) with one form in it: Wine.

I spent a month off and on getting my Wine db all shiny and organized, so I pulled up preferences, and went to Sync –> then click Cloud. I didn’t see a manual sync button, so I selected the Auto Sync checkbox expecting it to push up a separate Wine db into Cloudant. Instead it MERGED the two databases together into one frankenstein database. The records and fields all got merged together in both separate database documents. In the Spirits db, all my wines got dumped into the Bourbon category. In my Wine db, all the Bourbons got dumped into the Wine category, though oddly the Scotches and Rums didn’t come along for the ride. In both database documents, the Default Layout form now shows all the fields from both documents all merged into one. Also somehow, the Label layout I had to print labels out disappeared.

At this point it was 3am in the morning, and what I should have done is hopped on my laptop and grabbed the Spirits db document and used that to overwrite the one on my desktop that just got ruined. Instead what I did was open Tapforms on my laptop which just pulled everything down from Cloudant and mirrored the ruined state of things.

I hadn’t setup backups in Tapforms yet, so I had nothing to restore from. Instead I spent the next 2 hours separating things, rebuilding the forms, rebuilding the label layout, etc.

So uh.. what exactly did I do wrong here? In Preferences, when Cloudant Sync is selected, there’s just one db name listed, so does that mean only one db document can be synced through Cloudant? How do I maintain separate databases that stay in sync? I’ve turned off Sync in all instances of the app, signed out of Cloudant, and deleted the ruined database out from my Cloudant Dashboard. I’m afraid to turn sync back on.. either Nearby or Cloud for fear of what it might do. At least I have backups now.

Both the Spirits, and the Wine database have the same Document ID when I get info on them, but I’m not sure if it was always like that, or post sync catastrophe. I’m pretty sure they were different at some point though. They were created about a month apart, so I’m not sure whey they’re set to the same.

[Vasu Tummala]

Update: I exported Tapforms archives for both databases, nuked the old databases, created two new ones and imported the archives back in. I’ve confirmed that they have separate Document IDs, and re-setup Cloudant and now they seem to be syncing fine and not conflicting with each other.

Not sure what happened before, or how both databases came to have the same Document ID :(

[Brendan]

If you duplicate a .tapforms document, they will both have the same ID and can conflict with each other when syncing.

Creating a new document is the way you get unique document IDs.

[Vasu Tummala]

It’s possible that’s what I did, but can a future version check for this to ensure that all documents have unique IDs?

[Author]

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