Drastic Database Change
Windows 10 Pro.
Moneydance 2020.2 (1929).
I don't know if this is actually a problem but I am posting here just in case.
Sometime between about September 26 and today apparently a drastic change in the Moneydance database (data set) happened:
* The total number of files in the database decreased from 1210 to 201.
* The total number of folders in the database increased from 5 to 6.
* The total size of the database decreased from 26.9 MB to 11.3 MB.
I checked several accounts and the transactions seem to be there. Also the account balances appear to be correct.
So what just happened:
* Did I lose data?
* Does Moneydance have some kind of internal cleanup (garbage collection) or consolidation that runs periodically?
* Was there a change in the database structure instituted?
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1 Posted by dwg on Oct 07, 2020 @ 09:23 PM
I'm a fellow user.
There are housekeeping routines in Moneydance that archive older transactions file on a monthly basis so it is possible that this is what you are seeing. But there can be other explanations too.
Did you upgrade Moneydance? From what version?
Did you set up syncing between systems.
Both of these can have an effect, but for different reasons.
What folder are you talking about, the top level has had 5 folders for quite some time, there are many more sub folders scattered through the structure however.
The overall structure has not changed materially in any recent version, but there have been detail changes in how the files are being managed over the versions.
The current data structures date from Moneydance 2015.
2 Posted by FuzzyJohn on Oct 08, 2020 @ 03:07 AM
Thanks dwg,
I did not upgrade around the time this change took place. I have no sync setup.
The number of files, folders and total size I posted are from the Properties of the "Personal Finances.moneydance" folder.
I have been using Moneydance since about August 26, 2020. This drastic change seems to have taken place at about 1 month since I started using. Coupled with the fact that my transactions seems to be in the accounts and the balances are correct the most likely explanation is related to the monthly archiving that you mentioned.
Looking at the structure of my current "Personal Finances.moneydance" I can only see a total of 6 folders. Maybe more will be created over time. Right now my use of Moneydance is simple, without bank connections and without saving receipts in the program.
Thanks.
3 Posted by dwg on Oct 08, 2020 @ 03:39 AM
Based in the timing I would suspect the housekeeping is responsible.
Moneydance uses a journal form of writing data. The core data is held in a trunk file, as you create or modify transactions Moneydance writes these as small Transaction files. These transaction files are pretty small often only a few hundred bytes, perhaps a couple of thousand bytes, but there tends to be a lot of them, each may contain one transaction or perhaps a few.
I would envisage when you set up Moneydance you were doing quite a bit of data entry.
Routinely the contents of these transaction files are rolled into the core trunk file, they are not deleted however..
On a monthly basis Moneydance looks at the transaction files and those before the previous month are archived, so for example running Moneydance on or after October 1 will result in transaction files for August archived. The archive operation consolidates and encrypts these files into one compressed archive file and deletes the individual files from the data set.
Thus you can see a significant reduction in the number of files in the Data Set. In terms of size a single larger file is more efficient in terms of storage used, even if it was not compressed. Small files use far more space than the data in them requires due to how allocation is managed by the Operating System.
4 Posted by FuzzyJohn on Oct 09, 2020 @ 12:09 PM
Thanks for the info.
FuzzyJohn closed this discussion on Oct 09, 2020 @ 12:09 PM.