berkmancenter
Dashboard can display misleading messages if snapshot stored in multiple locations
If a link is intended to be saved in multiple storage locations (e.g. Local Storage and Internet Archive), and one of the location returns an error during storage (e.g. "Storage size too large", "Internet Archive did not return success code"), the error message may not be associated with the correct row on the dashboard.
This turns out to be a problem with our data model and how we're recording error messages associated with checking URLs and saving snapshots.
The message field displayed in the dashboard is stored as part of the amber_check table. Each URL has at most one row in the table. However, the rows on the dashboard come from the amber_cache table - and the cache table can have multiple rows for a single URL if there are multiple storage backends being used.
If we have a problem caching an item, that message is written to the row in the amber_check table associated with the URL, but there's no connection between this entry and the storage engine that encountered the error. So if one storage engine has a problem taking a snapshot and another does not, an error may (or may not) be written to the amber_check table, depending on the order in which they were executed.
A possible approach to fix this: Add a “message” field to the amber_cache table, to store any messages associated with saving a snapshot, as opposed to checking a URL. The “Notes” column in the UI can display any message associated with the last check, as well as any messages associated with the current saved snapshot on that backend.
