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Review
RealBackup
Issue: 1.5 (April/May 2003)
Author: Brian Jones
Article Description: No description available.
Article Length (in bytes): 3,762
Starting Page Number: 10
RBD Number: 1506
Resource File(s): None
Related Web Link(s):
home.mnet-online.de/leib/sascha/index.html
Known Limitations: None
Full text of article...
REALbasic provides quite a few tools to programmers, but there are still some necessities that just aren't offered. There are many little demons that can sidetrack a development project: crashes, misguided programming approaches, or simply unfathomable bugs. Sometimes it can be easier to simply start over from a recent version than it is to extract all of the unfinished problems from your code. As a result, I spend a lot of time saving various versions of my project according to a rather arcane naming convention, especially when I'm navigating uncharted programming waters and I'm never sure whether or not I could be making a huge mistake.
RealBackup is a small, freeware tool written specifically to address this problem. With an easy drag-and-drop interface, RealBackup can monitor several files at once. At a user-defined interval, RealBackup will check a monitored file for changes and create a backup of that file if it has changed. These backups are stored in a directory created by RealBackup in the project directory and are named to include their date and time of creation for easy organization later. So, simply by hitting cmd-S periodically throughout development, you allow RealBackup to create a thorough backup catalog of your product.
There is little you might expect of RealBackup that it doesn't offer. It advertises doing one thing, does that well, and doesn't complicate the process with any bells and whistles. It began as a personal, "in-house" tool for its developer who later decided to flesh it out a bit for a public audience. These small-time roots show through in its simple ease-of-use. The one drawback comes only from the lack of a Carbonized version of the application; but, with the source made available with the application, any REALbasic programmer can decide that they're the one to port this fine title to OS X.
The other side of what makes this application fun is that it was made with REALbasic and is distributed as open source. It is an example of the creative, niche solutions that are possible when development time is made so cheap by a rapid application development tool like REALbasic. It also may serve as a good example to beginning REALbasic programmers of various file handling routines that may not be as thoroughly covered in tutorials and the like as other, more high-profile, topics are.
This small freeware development aid can also be used on any file to which you are making frequent changes, whether a word processing document or a huge page layout file; however, given the need for quite frequent backups in programming, programming projects are the best use for this application. The ease-of-use of this application coupled with its non-existent pricetag should make it a potential component of any REALbasic programmer's toolkit. And for those of you out there who are in need of a little help, the source code is clean and readable.
In Brief Product RealBackup Manufacturer Sascha Leib Price Free Contact Info home.mnet-online.de/leib/sascha/index.html
Pros Simplifies a necessary process Cons Limited flexibility Rating (1.0-5.0): 4.0
End of article.
Article copyrighted by REALbasic Developer magazine. All rights reserved.
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