Beginning this morning and continuing for the next three to four weeks, massive changes are being made to the innards of www.steamlocomotive.info. If you happen to visit the site, and it does something odd, we probably already know about it.

I realize that it isn't exceptionally good practice to test changes on a production web site, but this is easier for me, so please excuse any weirdnesses you may encounter during your visit.

The first series of changes involve the underlying database that drives the entire website. We've changed the model to a transactional database. That means that there are actually two discrete database servers supporting www.steamlocomotive.info. Any change made to the primary database (a transaction) is replicated in the secondary database in near real time. Tools have been created to allow automated switching between the two databases. What this means, of course, is that loss of one server will not cause loss of service or loss of data.

The second database related change that we've alrealdy made and are now testing is this: now, when an editor changes the database a copy of the record as it existed before the change is "journaled". A depth of 10 journaled entries is maintained. In this way if an error is made or a record improperly deleted) it can be easily recovered into the state it was in before the change was made.

The third change we made recently was shutting down the forum system on www.steamlocomotive.info. It wasn't of much interest to anybody, least of all me, and we had endless series of registrations occurring for the purpose of advertising "pharmaceuticals" and weird interpersonal behaviour. It'll probably come back in some form, but we haven't decided yet.

Other changes are coming, and we hope that at least two or three of you will find them interesting.

Regards,
Doug