THE SYSTEM INVENTORY AND THE USER DATABASE

Much of Harbor’s data management is automatic and behind-the-scenes. Any input that is required from you the faithful user is pretty simple and straightforward.

At the core of Harbor lie two main databases: the system inventory database and the custom user database.

The System Inventory database
The system inventory database is simply a list of all the known audio files on your system or network. This database contains the names and locations of your audio files, and optionally includes copies of the embedded chunk header information contained within these files. The help section entitled "The System Inventory" explains this database in more detail.

The Custom User database
The custom user database contains any additional custom notes or data you wish to keep for any or all of the files. This database can be used for tagging files by project, content, or your own cross-reference keywords of any type, and is great for using in conjunction with Harbor’s database search capabilities for being able to find exactly the file or files you wish anywhere on your system within just a few seconds. See the help section entitled "The User Database" for more on this powerful Harbor tool.

Database Reconciliation
The information stored in your custom user database is automatically linked to the system inventory database by the pathname of the audio file to which it refers. On occasions where your hard drive configuration has changed or you have changed the names or locations of some of your audio files, the pathnames in the system inventory may become different than the ones on your custom user database. The links in the user database for those particular files are then said to be "orphaned" -- they have lost track of  their "parent" records in the inventory.

Harbor automatically checks for such orphaned records every time you update your system inventory database. If it finds any orphaned records, it will immediately alert you and provide you with the opportunity to re-link or otherwise fix the orphaned user records through a simple process called reconciliation. Refer to the help section entitled "Reconciling the Two Databases" for a description of this process.