I would like to add my vote for Bivio having Backup and
automatic Restore commands. Or call them Export and Import,
as you wish. Computers and their hardware and buildings and
equipment are easily destroyed. Computer data input
people - me club Treasurer - make mistakes. Sometimes it is
a lot easier to reload the last good update than try to
"fix" stuff.

I do not like to even think about having to call Bivio to
"fix" or "backup" my club's data. I should be able to do it
myself. I can do it with NAIC 1.04 and with InvestClub. So
far I have been keeping the books with NAIC 1.04 and then
uploading the .dat to Bivio. I would like to totally switch
to Bivio but I would like more flexibility available before
I do so.

InvestClub will already input Bivio's .xml output. So - how
about when the tax crunch is over - Bivio think about
accepting its own output for input ? The same as it now
accepts the ncadata.dat file.

Ilze

Ilze G Oredson writes:
> I would like to add my vote for Bivio having Backup and
> automatic Restore commands.

We will implement your request for creating a Web-based restore
interface in the near term, but please read on...

Backup is available via our Web interface today. Restore requires a
mail to support@bivio.com for now, and we'll add a Web interface to
what we do under the covers after taxes.

> Computers and their hardware and buildings and equipment are easily
> destroyed.

Good thing we back up your data hourly to a remote site 30 miles away.
Did you know that over the course of several years bivio.com has had
numerous hardware and software failures, and we've never lost a single
customer datum? Every transaction is written simultaneously to four
disks. Every computer has a backup. All data is backed up to tape.
Redundancy is our middle name.

> Computer data input people - me club Treasurer - make mistakes.
> Sometimes it is a lot easier to reload the last good update than try
> to "fix" stuff.

And, we can restore the state of your club as it looked 24 hours ago
very quickly without the need for you to backup your data. It is
interesting that the people who have needed this feature either 1) had
a local computer failure and lost their NCA data, which we gladly
restored for them, and 2) never use the XML export function. There
hasn't been a single request for an XML import.

Part of what makes bivio less expensive and better than our
competitors is that we implement features when demand is sufficient to
justify the cost. Automation for automation's sake is what makes
software buggy, and what increases your costs unnecessarily. We can
restore your xml backups, but we haven't created a Web interface. It
has been more cost-effective for us to handle the imports via
support@bivio.com. We built the XML import/export for a variety of
reasons, most of which have nothing to do with backing up your data.

> So - how about when the tax crunch is over - Bivio think about
> accepting its own output for input ? The same as it now accepts the
> ncadata.dat file.

Will do. We've got a few features ahead of this, including allowing
members to download their K1s directly.

Thanks for the suggestions,
Rob

> We will implement your request for creating a Web-based restore interface in the near term,
> but please read on...

I don't want you to spent time adding a feature that
virtually no one will use.


> Backup is available via our Web interface today. Restore requires a
> mail to support@bivio.com for now, and we'll add a Web interface to
> what we do under the covers after taxes.
> ...
> And, we can restore the state of your club as it looked 24 hours ago
> very quickly without the need for you to backup your data.

I'd consider it adequate for you to simply advertise more
prominently on the web site that both of these capabilities
are available and are officially supported. Perhaps adding
a "button" in the same area as the XML export that users
could click to get instructions explaining what's possible
and how to request it. And a Help topic too.


> There hasn't been a single request for an XML import.
> ...
> We can restore your xml backups, but we haven't created a Web interface. It has been
> more cost-effective for us to handle the imports via support@bivio.com.

That makes sense, but didn't you also say there had never
been a request to actually do an
import of XML data? If it's never been done, I find myself
wondering how you know that restoring exported XML data
actually works properly.


> We built the XML import/export for a variety of reasons, most of which have nothing to do
> with backing up your data.

I'm curious to know what those reasons were.

-Jim Thomas

Jim Thomas writes:
> I don't want you to spent time adding a feature that
> virtually no one will use.

We won't unless it is easy. Paul thinks it's easy, so we'll get to
it relatively soon. It would be more convenient for customer support,
because not everybody has access to the command line import
interface.

> I'd consider it adequate for you to simply advertise more
> prominently on the web site that both of these capabilities
> are available and are officially supported. Perhaps adding
> a "button" in the same area as the XML export that users
> could click to get instructions explaining what's possible
> and how to request it. And a Help topic too.

This is probably as much work as linking in the feature.

> That makes sense, but didn't you also say there had never
> been a request to actually do an
> import of XML data?

That's correct. No one who has used the export feature has asked us
to restore their data. (I could be wrong here, but the number of
cases is must be very small if I can't remember anybody doing it.)

However, we use it internally all the time. For example, when we
encounter a bug on the production system, the easiest way to reproduce
it is to backup the club and restore it on a development system. We
also use it to extract a club's data from our standby system to
restore it to production. Like I said, the people who need the
feature don't export or backup their data anyway.

> If it's never been done, I find myself
> wondering how you know that restoring exported XML data
> actually works properly.

There are a number of levels to importing data. The XML and NCA
imports don't share the same front-end, but they do share the same
back-end. Not only does this reduce our work, but it also reduces the
number of bugs.

> > We built the XML import/export for a variety of reasons, most of
> > which have nothing to do with backing up your data.
>
> I'm curious to know what those reasons were.

Firstly, we wanted a way of giving our customers the freedom of choice
to move to our competitors that was extensible (the X in XML stands
for extensible) and free of proprietary implementation choices, i.e.,
using a standard document interchange protocol. At least one
competitor allows you to import your bivio data.

Secondly, we wanted a transparent backup mechanism. This makes it
easier to debug problems, and it makes it easier to create data sets
for testing and such.

There are probably other reasons that I can't remember, but those are
the ones that spring to mind.

BTW, the import was implemented many years back to allow us to
update our demo club. We build up the demo system offline and then
import it into production.

Rob