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Location of database files

Started by P7endragon, December 02, 2016, 10:55:18 PM

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P7endragon

I notice that Plan-G is storing the database files that it builds from FSX etc in My Documents. Picking out a couple of the largest files, I've got:

  • \Plan-G Files\Data\PlanG3_FSX.sdf at 144 MB
  • \Plan-G Files\DEM\b10g at 99 MB
I'm not sure that these kind of generated application data are really supposed to be kept in "My Documents". My understanding of Microsoft's guidelines are that it would probably be more appropriate for these to be stored somewhere like %LOCALAPPDATA%. Having them where they currently are means that whenever anyone backs up everything in My Documents (not an unreasonable thing to do), they'd be including over 240 MB of unimportant data that can be easily regenerated. Looking at other filenames in there, I can see how files such as "UserWpts3.sdf" perhaps should be in My Documents (assuming, judging by the filename, that this is where waypoints I create manually get stored - a user would want those backing up)

tim arnot

The DEM files are not program generated, they are elevation tiles that you've downloaded from the Internet, so they are in absolutely the right place. The navigation data needs to be manually copied to satellite machines for network usage, and for the majority of users, having everything in one place and not having to decode obscure and possibly hidden pathnames every time the database is updated makes for a significantly better user experience. It's perfectly acceptable for it to be there.

Tim. @TimArnot

P7endragon

Fair enough, I'd forgotten about the DEM files being manually downloaded. I'm still not convinced it's the best place, especially for files like PlanG3_FSX.sdf, but we can agree to disagree  :). At least now I know, I can exclude them from backups

Thanks