Discussion about Groups and Links - handling, save, restore relations

[Uwe]

Hello,
not using Links or Groups - you can skip this article - or maybe you can think about using Links and Groups now 😉
I use Links between the original "parent" item (e.g RAW format, GPX track file) and its "child" items (e.g for photobooks TIF format, TIF/JPG file created by GPX Viewer/screenshot).
For panoramas I use the Groups to keep them together: the final TIF panorama on top and the original RAWs as part of the group. Some stitching software (e.g. PTGui, Hugin) creates its own project files which can be part of the group. If the final TIF panorama is used in a photobook - it's additionally linked to its "child" photobook TIF item.
Automatic backups of my catalogs every day 22:00 by batch file. Automatic backups of the files every day (full and incremental).
This is hopefully save enough to be prepared if the worst case happens: total system crash and a reset my landscape from scratch.
The restore of the catalog backup restores the Links and Groups - everything is ok.
The gap for me is:

• also the backups can be destoyed or there is a bug in the backup. The Links and Groups are not part of the metadata of the file and can get lost.
• I can't select Links and Groups in the Tag Panel because they are not "regular" tags. Do you need such a selection?

This was the reason to think about a solution that fits for me described in the attached PDF.
If someone has additional/better/different remarks and/or solutions, please feel free to share it here in this post. If you think this is an theoretical subject - you are welcome too.
Regards, Uwe

 

Save Group and Link relations to the metadata of file.pdf

[WilfriedB]

A similar issue exists, if you use the new AI Labels. If you loose the catalog database, for whatever reason, your loos also all AI Labels. Of course, they can be recovered by accessing Google Cloud Vision again, but for a big number of images a lot of time and costs can incur (only 1,000 tags per month can be created for free).

Besides that, I remember there were other tags not written to metadata.

On 12/4/2019 at 10:50 AM, Uwe said:

I can't select Links and Groups in the Tag Panel because they are not "regular" tags. Do you need such a selection?

This disturbs me too (and for me was one of the reasons, not to use links or groups anymore). However, SQL-savvy people can get a list of list of group tops (the item on to of each group) by using this selection:

select distinct id_topmediaitemstack top_id, name, creationdatetime from mediaitems where countofstackitems > 1;

Links between media items can be discovered by:

select id_frommediaitem, id_tomediaitem from mediaitems_link;

The result is always a list of Item IDs, which you can paste into the quick search field of the Daminion client (separated by a space and checking Any Words and Item ID first under Find files with:).

[Uwe]

Hello,

It's now time to spend some time at home with experiments. My experiment was to develop two programs to backup and restore "Link"-relations of a Daminion catalog.

If you are interested in this topic feel free to use, to test the programs even if they are not developed like state-of-the-art programs.

Any comments/improvements are wellcome. Please read the documentation and download the programs below.

Regards, Uwe

Backup and Restore Link relations.pdf Backup_Restore_Links.zip

[rene]

Uwe, thanks for sharing. I will check this out.