The points database is a single file that contains all your data for the points app, the database is compatible between the iPad/iPhone/iPod/Windows and can be moved between them all as often as you like, even if you don't need to use the app on more than one device it is usfull to learn this process so you can make backups of your database.

To access the database you must use iTunes on a PC or Mac, there are plans to use dropbox but the dropbox developers have not yet released the bindings required to make this straight forward on the Apple apps so I am wating for them to complete that work before I make the app compatible with dropbox, don't hold your breath I have been waiting over a year so far and there seems to be no movement from them at the moment.

When the device is plugged into iTunes, you need to select the relevent device then click on Apps, this lists all the apps on your device, scroll all the way down until you get to 'File Sharing' these are the apps that expose their data to iTunes, select 'WizPoints' on the left hand side, on the right hand side is the files, you are looking for files with a wza extension, the file with the newest time/date stamp will be your database file, the default file name is pointsrevision.wza click on this file, and then click on 'Save to..' the file must be saved to the PC/Mac I suggest saving it to the desktop for ease. There are other files some with numbers at the end like pointsrevision.wza.3.0.0 this is a backup of your database when you installed a new version of the app, this means if something went wrong with the installation of the new version you can roll back the database just by saving that file to the desktop and renaming it and then putting it back on the device.

The process for putting a file onto the device is almost the same as above, this time with file listing you click on add and go and find the file and add it to the device, it is worth closing the app and restarting it when you move a file onto the device, on the maintenance tab of the app you can see what database is loaded to make sure you are running the right one.

Backups are important, please make copies of your database periodically, think about it like this how far back are you prepared to go if you lost your device, would you be prepared to lose a weeks work?, if not then make copies more frequently.

There are a couple of options in the maintanance tab that are worth running periodically "Verify structure" this makes sure that your database has all the right tables/fields, so if you are hitting issues after upgrading then this is worth running, "Verify database" this checks the database for errors, this is a low level test and does not test the actual data but makes sure that the database does not have corruptions, if you run this and find there are errors, please email me a copy of your database so I can investigate what is wrong.

I do not recomend iCloud for backups it misses things quite a lot of the time, the above procedure is the only reliable way of taking backups of your data.

 

Last edited by Alex (5/01/2015 11:55 am)