Generally speaking a computers memory falls into two categories; RAM and Permanent Storage (Hard Disk, Zip, CD-Rom etc.) The RAM (Random Access Memory) is the temporary storage area of a computer and is used as the working area for a computer that is in use.

It contains the actual program being run as well as any temporary storage requirement of the program This may include the storage of the item being ‘worked on’ by the user.

In the event of a power failure, whilst the contents of the permanent storage area usually retains its stored information, this temporary storage area loses its contents. Any information contained within it, not written to the permanent storage area, is lost.

More importantly, because the process of transferring this information from the temporary storage area to the permanent one may only be partially complete, a PC failure could cause a corruption in the data already stored in the permanent storage area.

The best solution to prevent PC failure by power failure is to install a UPS (uninterrupable Power Supply) between the mains supply and the PC. When the power fails, the user has time to save their work and close down the program safely as the UPS will continue to power the PC for a limited time.

RADical Systems always recommends the installation of UPSs to help prevent PC cashes due to mains power failure or disruptions.

The problem with this is that PC failures do not always occur due to power outages. There may be other reasons such as failure of other elements of the PC, crashes caused by other software etc.

Dealing with failure is difficult and this is where Space Manager excels.

Space Manager is based around a client/server arrangement. In essence, this means that the Space Manager client the user uses does not access the Space manager database directly. It makes ‘requests’ to a database server. This is another program whose task is to manage and ‘protect’ the database in its charge.

Put simply, data is only written to the database by this server in ‘chunks’, if a chunk is incomplete because the PC running the client software, the server software (if different) or the link between fails, the server program will ‘roll back’ the database to the point prior to the incomplete ‘chunk’.

In practice each individual ‘chunk’ is very small, such as a single payment or unit rental, and a ‘chunk’ is not treated as complete by the server if it contains corrupt or incomplete data. Effectively therefore the database and server are self-repairing and Space Manager’s database is extremely resilient to corruptions due to hardware or software failure.

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