Astro-Databank:Software
Important information as of 5 March 2021
Astrodienst no longer supports the old Astrodatabank Software.
No further data updates are provided, and no copies of the old Windows databases based on MS Access can be made available.
Everything below is outdated information.
Obsolete Information for owners of the Astrodatabank Software versions 3.0 and 4.0
The old Astrodatabank web server will not be continued. All browser requests to the old website are redirected to this wiki.
Because now the complete content of Astro-Databank is public, the special 'newsmaker' feature is no longer required. Astrodienst has developed a new style to make recent additions to the database highly visibly, via the Astro-Databank section in the Forum.
WebUpdate function: The WebUpdate feature of the software continues to work. Astrodienst provides new database updates in the same way as previously, there is no difference in the established update procedure: just run Tools->Webupdate. Since April 2012, the WebUpdates follow the changes on the wiki edition, which are pushed to WebUpdates at least twice per week. IMPORTANT: If your Astrodatabank installation has not been updated frequently, the WebUpdate function will fail after the download, with an error message similar to: error 3052, File sharing lock count exceeded. There exists a way to work around this problem.
- From the Windows start menu, select 'run Program' and type: regedit
- Search for this key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Jet\4.0\Engines\Jet 4.0 (on some windows installation it may be at this key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Jet\4.0\Engines\Jet 4.0)
- and identify the value MaxLocksPerFile within this key.
- select decimal values, and set the value to 200000 (two hundred thousand). Save and quit regedit.
- Restart Astrodatabank, and run WebUpdate again.
Fresh install: If you install fresh from the Astrodatabank-4 CDROM, the first Webupdate you are going to run will try to install over 28'000 new data and modify 20'000 of the existing data records. This will evoke an error 6 overflow message during the Update phase, after the successful download of around 900 update files. This happens even when the MaxLocks fix above has been applied.
To work around this, cooperation with Astrodienst staff is required. There are two options:
- for a short time, we provide a reduced set up update data, which keeps the number under the 32'000 overflow limit. Once this is done, the remaining update can be applied.
- We provide a a download link for the complete database in its already updated form.
To use this support, please contact Astrodienst via the support group 'adbusers' (see below),
WebComments: The old website contained an online discussion board for newsmaker charts. This discussion board is not longer present. It has been replaced by this feature:
- a special Astro-Databank area in the Astrodienst Forum. All the old WebComments have been transferred into 288 threads on this forum.
New software releases: Astrodienst does not plan to publish new releases of the Astrodatabank PC software. The public wiki is intended to fully replace this software, with the advantage that it is free.
Software support: Astrodienst cannot currently provide end user support for problems with the Astrodatabank PC software. There exists a public discussion group at http://groups.google.com/group/adbusers which gives community support. There was previously a Yahoo group of the same name started by an ADB user. Sadly, that user (who as admin had sole authority over the group) has deleted the group without informing anybody.
Continued software sales: While there is continued interest to purchase the Astrodatabank 4.0 software, Astrodienst cannot continue to offer it for sale, both for legal and for technical reasons. It cannot even be given away for free, because it contains proprietary fonts for which yearly royalties would be due to the font manufacturer.