Dear David:

I'm pretty sure this comes under the heading of cold comfort, but we logged
in the same type of "phantom" error about 18 months ago with GS. In our
case, we were working with a CR 9 report we had designed which combined data
from all tables selected correctly EXCEPT in the case of a few random
records (from a filtered set of several hundred) that insisted on showing us
an incorrect thumbnail in the thumblob field. If I understand you correctly,
you have similarly rouge field data randomly appearing? Ours was a jpg of an
oil painting of a cow so it was easy to spot -- we never found a pattern in
its appearance, and each time the report was refreshed it would turn up in a
different object record randomly. Witchy!

 

We worked for several hours to puzzle it out with GS, and finally solved the
problem with a work-around by deleting the "cow painting" media file
entirely, running all checks/updates in Config>Maintenance, and then
recreating the media object and reassociating. Cows gone, but far-off eerie
music plays on . . . 

 

CR XI has proven to be more stable (you don't say what version you're
running) for us and has many other advantages. You also don't say how many
objects from the 1991 collection have the extensive copyright data field and
if deleting/recreating is an option. If anyone else has seen this particular
ghost in the machine, I'd like to hear too. In the meantime, I wish you
green pastures and a happy weekend!

Best regards,

Jen

 

Jennifer W. Smith

J Whitley Smith Consulting - Private Art Catalogues and Collection Imaging

715 Lake Street, Suite 500

Oak Park, IL  60301

(708) 445-9101

(708) 445-0288 FAX

[log in to unmask]

 

From: The Museum System (TMS) Users [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Aylsworth, David
Sent: Friday, July 18, 2008 4:15 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: phantom data in crystal reports

 

Happy Friday, everyone.

Have any of you had an issue of "phantom" data showing up in a crystal
report on your records when the data is not anywhere in the field for the
record itself?  I've got a crystal report that pulls up, among other things,
copyright restrictions.  The OBJRights table is linked to Objects with a
left outer join, and the "Restrictions" field is included with nothing
fancy.  

I've got a batch of records for objects accessioned between 1968-1972 that
when I run this report on them, extensive copyright restrictions that came
with a collection in 1991 show up on the report.  There is nothing in the
restrictions field in TMS for them.  And, when I put in jibberish for a
restriction, the jibberish will not show up, but the bogus restrictions
still do.

Since recently accessioned objects that had new records created individually
for them function properly, I thought maybe this was something affecting any
records that were converted from our previous db, but I've pulled up plenty
of records that came over in the conversion that function right.  As far as
I can sleuth out, it is restricted to accessioned objects accessioned
between 1968-1972.  That was prime time for hallucinogenics, but this is too
much of a trip for me on a Friday afternoon.  

Any ideas?

I appreciate any help you can give.

Thanks,

David

David Aylsworth

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Registrar for Collections

telephone:  713-639-7824

fax:  713-639-7780