Back Up data

The typical reason you want to backup your data are one so that if your computer crashes you have a file of the data and you don't lose all your hard earned effort of entering information into the logbook. The other reason is that you want to use this same peice of software say on your home computer and on your laptop. The following outlines how you can move the data files from one system to the next.

The data file is located in your user home directory. Each operating system has their own location where they think this should be, Windows XP likes to put this at C:\Documents and Settings\yourusername\. Unix like environments puts it in "/home/username/". When the logbook is first run it creates a subdirectory in this user home location called ".softlanding" it is in here where the data files are located. The following is the list of data files you can store to (the so 1980s-1990s floppy), cd-rom, usb memory drive. 

                    logbook.db.properties
                    logbook.db.script
These files are basically the database scripts that are run everytime the application starts up. note: If you are a database guru you could update your logbook by modifying the database scripts this way, but if you run into any problems don't blame the software. These are HSQL database files and are written by the HSQL database server, which runs within the application.

Multiple System Copies

So you have your data backed up to disk, now you want to use this data on your new system. First step is to install the Pilots Logbook software and run it. The reason you want to run the logbook software is because it will create the .softlanding directory and other resources in your user and system home directories. Again, you could do this manually, but why go through the effort?

Shut down the newly installed logbook software, and copy the backed up data files into the new system's {USERHOME}/.softlanding directory.

Restart the logbook software and you should now see all your logbook data.