Author Topic: WeatherLink - Could Not Open Database (Max # of WLK files in directory)  (Read 2892 times)

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Offline jammer13

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Hi,

I was just happily going along with my VP2 over the last year using Meteobridge to WU and an old laptop running Weatherlink to keep my data in WeatherLink format since I've been using WeatherLink since 1992 on my original WMII.  I just noticed that WeatherLink was giving an error "Could not Open Database" when trying to open the station.  Initially, I thought I had a corrupt data file (.wlk) since it stopped around the first of February.  However, after renaming extensions of some .wlk files for troubleshooting, I am now pretty certain that Weatherlink (i'm using 6.0.3) has a maximum limit of 300 wlk files that it can handle.  That corresponds to 25 years which probably sounded pretty safe at some point, but I've hit that limit.  I copied several years worth of old wlk files into a subfolder in the station directory and all seems well with the only problem that I've missed about 7 days of data since it took me awhile to catch the issue.  I think i can recreate from either WU or Weather Display which I'm also running concurrently on the laptop.

Just in case it helps anyone else......

Offline Mattk

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Re: WeatherLink - Could Not Open Database (Max # of WLK files in directory)
« Reply #1 on: February 26, 2018, 01:11:36 AM »
Well I'll be .... if that's the case I betcha Davis wasn't expecting anybody to hit that limit?

Offline Bushman

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Re: WeatherLink - Could Not Open Database (Max # of WLK files in directory)
« Reply #2 on: February 26, 2018, 08:27:10 AM »
As in "Who would ever need more than 640K memory in a PC?"  :)  Glad you sorted it; Davis owes you one though. 
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Offline ocala

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Re: WeatherLink - Could Not Open Database (Max # of WLK files in directory)
« Reply #3 on: February 26, 2018, 07:31:38 PM »
Means I have 11 years left. :-|
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Offline mmorris

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Re: WeatherLink - Could Not Open Database (Max # of WLK files in directory)
« Reply #4 on: February 27, 2018, 05:27:23 PM »
With any luck your whole system will crash and you will be able to start over again from 0  :twisted:
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Offline jammer13

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I did receive a response from Davis Support and evidently it's not the number of files that's important but the number of years.  They verified that the limit is 25 years for a specific station and suggested creating unique stations for every decade which isn't a bad idea but I'll have to think if that's a good way for me.

Offline Mattk

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Why bother building a limit of 25 years into the software in the first place, like what's the point of doing that?

Offline Aardvark

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Why don't you do what I have been doing since 1990?  I have been putting data into spreadsheets on each of the parameters  that I am interested in.   I get immediate graphs.  The downside is I have to find the maximum,min., average and in some cases count.  You have set up the spreadsheet. I use Excel, but apple has a version that shows up on the mac as default.

You have to  figure the spreadsheet calculations  out but it is pretty easy and then have the the charts .  What you have is then a lot of data saved in a usable form.  you have a control and selection of calculations and so forth.

Then you can move some of the wlk files into a folder on your computer, cloud...  for storage.

I also suspect you could purchase weatherdisplay and use its utility to take all the wlk files and convert them to log files for so that Weatherdisplay to track the data.  It is simple.   

I have attached two charts and one data table. so you get a view of what I do.

Offline Bushman

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Why bother building a limit of 25 years into the software in the first place, like what's the point of doing that?

25?  What significance could there be in that number?  I would have thought 2 to the N - 32, 64 etc. years
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Offline Aardvark

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Why bother building a limit of 25 years into the software in the first place, like what's the point of doing that?

25?  What significance could there be in that number?  I would have thought 2 to the N - 32, 64 etc. years
well that is a quarter of a century,  maybe they figured the station wouldn't last that long?   OR  maybe that is the size of the database they created and the 10 year old who designed their software, figured that within 25 years  they would be at some level of genius that would make their software redundant.  Well in sort of a manner they have and gone cloud based with no intention of revision of the Weatherlink software other than for settings and putting all into Weatherlink 2.0

I still think this person needs to archive older records,  put them into a different data base such as weatherdisplay (I have a boat load of data in my copy) and many backups in different locations.  and to either findsomeone to write a spreadsheet for him/her  or do it on their own.

Well I offered my suggestions,  I guess it up to jammer13 to decide

Offline jammer13

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Re: WeatherLink - Could Not Open Database (Max # of WLK files in directory)
« Reply #10 on: March 14, 2018, 10:14:24 PM »
For the 25 years, I'm guessing by the dated interface which hasn't changed in all those 25 years, the programmer thought there might be an issue with retaining too much in memory which wasn't that plentiful back then.  But 25 does sound pretty arbitrary.  I've been using Weather Display concurrently with WeatherLink over the past year and a half with good success and I'm probably hanging on to WeatherLink just because....

I have exported data to Excel previously but haven't done so recently - it's not a bad idea to do that again.   I'm not in a major hurry to do anything more right now, I archived 1992-2000, so I've got about eight more years left before I need to do anything again. :grin:

Offline wetter-pocking

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Re: WeatherLink - Could Not Open Database (Max # of WLK files in directory)
« Reply #11 on: March 17, 2018, 08:38:50 AM »
The same thing happened to me now. Since March 1993 I record weather data and 2 times a month I read the archive files. Everything went normal in January and February, but now in March came the news that the database can not be opened. After moving the files of a few years I can use weatherlink again due to this forum post.