Last not least a post concerning Invalid BYs. They sneak in over various paths: from ancient online entries, over headshot files or simply by typos. Here is an attempt to defeat them.
As already practiced in the posts above, I use a profile with all known invalid BYs to walk through and check, if the invalid entries are used in other profiles of my database.
Because of the import logic of DVD Profiler it is not that easy to handle this dummy profile: when a birth year which is not already existant in the local database is imported, then all profiles for the same name without a BY assigned get the new (in this case invalid) BY - That would be exactly the opposite direction than we want to go...
The solution is a second profile (Valid BYs) which contains the same names without any BY and/or with the correct BYs. Yes, most of the times an empty BY is the
valid alternative to an invalid BY...
I see two different use cases (aproaches to get rid of invalid BYs) here:
a) The one shot: Check if there are invalid BYs in the local database, step back to a previously saved backup and remove them.
b) The concurrent method: keep the invalid BYs in the local database but prevent them from getting used in profiles (my prefered variant).
The one shot aproach in detail:
- make a backup of the database
- import
this database file (please read the following paragraphs, describing how this file can be restored correctly), which contains both profiles,
Valid BYs and
Invalid BYs- walk through the cast and crew members of the
Invalid BYs and write down each name, which is used in local profiles
- restore the previously saved backup of the local database (to eliminate the newly imported invalid BYs)
- manually remove the preexistent invalid BYs from the database
The concurrent method in detail:
- make a backup of the database (hopefully we won't need it later)
- import
this database file (please read the following paragraphs, describing how this file can be restored correctly), which also contains both profiles,
Valid BYs and
Invalid BYs - but each invalid entry has a dummy headshot attached to it to identify this name/BY combination as invalid
- remove the
Valid BYs profile from the local database - it is not needed for checking...
- walk through the cast and crew members of the
Invalid BYs on a regular basis to find invalid BYs, which sneaked in...
- additionally the dummy headshot warns when one of these invalid BYs is assigned to a profile
To restore one of these files the correct restore settings have to be chosen - it is important to select
both profiles:
And once again the Warning: Forgetting to check the
Restore Specific Profiles Option on restore will
OVERWRITE THE COMPLETE DATABASE. Importing only the
invalid BYs profile will
MESS UP CORRECT BYs.
And a last time - the remarks
- All profiles included in these backups are set to a manual disc ID with 16 digits to avoid collisions with any local manual disc IDs. It is safe to restore them to any pre populated database.
- It might be interesting to import the correction databases into an empty database to see, how they are set up and decide if they should get into the main database...
- It is
STRONGLY recomended to make a backup copy of the local database up front any import!!