October 2004
As Tigress moves into its second decade of supporting the
commercial market it is worth commenting on some issues that we
encounter more frequently when supporting the clients.
Old project databases
As with most software, as Tigress develops it may become more
difficult to restore older versions of the Tigress data models
(typically saved in the user community as ‘tigdumps’, or Tigress
project backup files). Whilst Tigress maintains the ability
in-house to support older versions of our projects, we cannot
guarantee to do so indefinitely. One challenge lies in the
hardware/software dependency that these older models use. As older
hardware platforms are retired and discontinued from service, we
cannot guarantee to be able to run the older operating software on
these new hardware platforms.
If you do have older projects then we strongly recommend you
update them. The update process is straight forward but should you
need advice on the process, or would like Tigress to manage the
upgrade for you, please contact us.
Obsolete media
A related topic for some sites is obsolete media. The ‘shelf
life’ of tape format media has shortened rapidly through the
nineties, right up to the current formats; not because of the
quality of materials used, but often because the physical tape
devices and formats themselves have changed frequently to
accommodate higher density and greater storage capacity. The result
is that you may find yourself left with tapes that cannot be read
by any of the new devices! Given that some Tigress projects have
been in existence now for approaching 15 years, it is worthwhile
checking you don’t have any projects mothballed on old media. In
addition the reliability, low cost and universal accessibility of
CD and DVD drives mean that for all but the largest storage needs
these media have become a much more practical storage solution for
many users.
Data links
Tigress has spent several man years of development effort to
ensure it maintains powerful data links with other third party
software. The Tigress OpenWorks link is well established in its
provision of a comprehensive, bidirectional channel between
projects. In addition, the Tigress Geoshare half link has been
significantly revised this year to bring the link up to the
Geoshare version 13 model, and now includes support for more
seismic data.
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