5/4/2006 7:44:13 AM

Hello, I'm currently evaluating worship software. What I like about SongShowPlus is that every song is stored in a separate file. At first I was very excited about that, but then I found that it was just a custom binary file format. The only description I found is for a very old version. Is there a description of the current file format?

5/4/2006 7:54:36 AM

Marty,

I cant answer about the format, I am sure someone will..

what are you wanting to do with it ?? a bit more info might help identify another way around it?? or another way to do it??

Rod

5/4/2006 1:39:05 PM

Well, if you have more than one computer then you'll most likely have the problem of having the same set of songs on all computers. If I knew the the file format then I could easily make a little program that converts the songs into text files and compare them with tools like WinMerge. That is not possible with binary files.

5/4/2006 2:51:48 PM

A couple of solutions.

1) if all the computers are networked, store your SSP data out on a common shared drive.

2) Use the SSP backup/restore utility to move songs from one machine to another. When you make the back up, only back up with songs database.

5/4/2006 3:07:34 PM

1) That is not the case.

2) Can the backup/restore utility show differences between two songs so that I know which one to keep?

5/4/2006 3:14:26 PM

1) Too bad. That would have been the easy answer.

2) I don't think so. I assumed it would be mostly new songs that you were trying to keep up to date on all machines.

Hopefully someone more familiar with backup/restore can chime in and let us know what would happen in a situation like that.

5/4/2006 11:34:49 PM

2) No, but that's an interesting idea. It will, however, prompt you before overwriting a newer song file if you choose that option.

5/4/2006 11:35:28 PM

BTW, going to an XML format is on my to-do list -- but way down there.

5/5/2006 4:05:10 AM

Just comparing by date is not enough. I want to know about what has changed in a song. This is the only way to tell which version of a song is the correct one. The newest "version" of a song does not necessarily need to be the correct one.

5/5/2006 7:12:41 PM

Ha, that is soooo true!  I label our songs with the title and then youth or choir special, etc.  That way I know which version of the song it is, but I do that from withing Songshow Plus.  I also package to go everything and save a copy on my laptop at home.  How many people will be accessing your songs?  It sounds like you will have a ton of them. 

5/8/2006 8:10:36 AM

Actually, the text itself is ASCII, and a visual examination with Notepad may help for small tasks. But sometime ago I downloaded a unix-like diff for Windows, which may be just what you want. Sorry, I can't point you to a link, but it should be fairly easy to find.

5/8/2006 8:29:07 AM

Here's what I use for comparing text files in Windows

ExamDiff