[Zope] CorruptTransactionError (Bad news for production site!)

Richard Taylor r.taylor@eris.dera.gov.uk
05 Jul 2000 10:23:17 +0100


Today I had to role back two days of transactions from my production
site because when I packed the database I was informed of a
CorruptTransactionError. 

We are using Zope for an internal knowledge management application
where anyone in the organization can add objects. So I have no way of
know what was added after the fateful transaction and no way of
getting any of it back.

Bummer!

I think this raises a few questions about ZDB:

1) We need some tools for selectively removing bad transactions
   rather than just truncating Data.fs back to the last good one and
   loosing everything that comes after it.

2) We could do with a tools that can verify the ZODB offline. This
   could then be run at regular intervals (maybe once an hour from
   cron) so that corruptions can be picked up earlier.

3) Some way to find out what was added after a corrupt transaction is
   needed so that at least I could see who I need to ask to re-add
   their stuff.

I love Zope I think it the best web application framework I have use
(and I have used many), but this incident has shaken my confidence in
the ZODB. I can live with the occasional error and I don't object to
having to do some work to recover things. But, this appears to be an
error from which I can not recover my data even though I have backups.

Richard



PS. Is there anyone offering commercial support for Zope in the
UK. The more I am relying on Zope the more I think I need someone to
provide guaranteed backup.