Possible to Autosave module?

One of our Doors-users just lost quite a bit of work. Due to some reason the connection with the DOORS database server was lost.
DOORS shut down. Restarting DOORS and opening the new module he was working on, resulted in an empty module.
It seemed that he did not do any save during his work.
1) Is his work completely lost or is something still stored in his local temp directory?

2) Does DOORS have a feature like e.g. MS Word that it does an autosave every 'n' (configurable?) minutes?

I attached the error message as described. Any of you have suggestions about the cause?
SystemAdmin - Fri Feb 19 06:03:29 EST 2010

Re: Possible to Autosave module?
roybond - Fri Feb 19 08:40:36 EST 2010

You could implement an autosave feature using a Trigger.

As an example a Trigger could be fired after each edit of an Object Attribute, and increment a counter stored as a Module Attribute. Once the Module Attribute Counter exceeds a given count, you then save the Module and clear the counter.

FYI - any Trigger I implement, I also add a 'switch' into the Formal Module(s) so that if needed I can disable the Trigger DXL.

Regards, Roy.

Re: Possible to Autosave module?
kbmurphy - Fri Feb 19 16:38:00 EST 2010

roybond - Fri Feb 19 08:40:36 EST 2010
You could implement an autosave feature using a Trigger.

As an example a Trigger could be fired after each edit of an Object Attribute, and increment a counter stored as a Module Attribute. Once the Module Attribute Counter exceeds a given count, you then save the Module and clear the counter.

FYI - any Trigger I implement, I also add a 'switch' into the Formal Module(s) so that if needed I can disable the Trigger DXL.

Regards, Roy.

Careful with triggers like this. On a large module the slowdown it causes will be unacceptable to your user. Also, what if the connection drops during a save?

I think users like yours need to learn the hard way about saving in DOORS. I don't think a trigger is necessary--the lesson was learned.

Re: Possible to Autosave module?
llandale - Sat Feb 20 17:14:43 EST 2010

roybond - Fri Feb 19 08:40:36 EST 2010
You could implement an autosave feature using a Trigger.

As an example a Trigger could be fired after each edit of an Object Attribute, and increment a counter stored as a Module Attribute. Once the Module Attribute Counter exceeds a given count, you then save the Module and clear the counter.

FYI - any Trigger I implement, I also add a 'switch' into the Formal Module(s) so that if needed I can disable the Trigger DXL.

Regards, Roy.

Some sort of auto-save dialog box with a 'timer' DBE might work better, but be advised it will save after x minutes, evern if the user is in the middle of an edit; in which case he'll save just what's been edited so far, and will have to get back into the obj-attr to finish the edit.

You say you add some sort of button in the module window allowing disabling the trigger for that module edit session? How?

  • Louie

Re: Possible to Autosave module?
roybond - Mon Feb 22 08:15:23 EST 2010

llandale - Sat Feb 20 17:14:43 EST 2010
Some sort of auto-save dialog box with a 'timer' DBE might work better, but be advised it will save after x minutes, evern if the user is in the middle of an edit; in which case he'll save just what's been edited so far, and will have to get back into the obj-attr to finish the edit.

You say you add some sort of button in the module window allowing disabling the trigger for that module edit session? How?

  • Louie

It's nothing so complicated Louie. For every Trigger I create, I add a Module Attribute which can be set 'Enable' or 'Disable' by any Admin User, and I add a line of code at the beginning of the Trigger DXL which then only runs the DXL if the Module Attribute for that Trigger is set to 'Enable'.

Roy.