"Snapshotting" versions of nests as of a certain time#374

I think it’d be great to be able to save versions of NK nests so that we can keep track of changes. I’m conceptualizing it as something where you push/pull nests from a repository. It would be great to be able to select versions to view in synthesis as well.

Use case: A client comes to us and wants to see what the nest used to look like. This happens a lot (and happened a lot in MASTRO).

I have also dreamt of a feature where you can “checkout” a nest at different points in time. This would allow for easy browsing / QAing, and reversion.

Unfortunately, we don’t maintain all of our data to the necessary level of granularity, and almost certainly will not in future; it’s just a TON of data to track, maintain, and define backwards compatible behavior for. Short of a paradigm shift in technologies we use, of course :)

As a much scaled back feature, we have discussed “snapshotting” nests in Synthesis, using only screening status. In short, you could move a date slider around, and anything not included at that point in time would not be shown.

1. We do maintain screening history, so this is entirely feasible
2. This is on mission, making it possible to view living reviews at various time points in the past

Hmmm. Would it be possible to push data from the nest when clicking a button and save that data? So, instead of saving all data constantly, it’d be adjacent to push/pulling from like R to/from github at specified time points.

Isn’t that just nest copy?

We could possibly dress it up more nicely (e.g. not show snapshot copies on AL, offer you a listing within nest Settings).

Yes, but I don’t want my autolit cluttered with copies of the same nest.

Right, we could not show snapshot copies on AL home, that would make sense!

There’s a few complications I’m imagining:

1. It’d be easy to lose track of which snapshot (or original) you’re looking at, when on AL
2. The snapshot should probably be read-only (#64) to avoid snapshots becoming inaccurate.

1) I think the date of the snapshot should be required to be in the title.
2) I actually like that. I’ve wanted read-only nests for a bit. :)

Sure! Building on that Karl, I think you could do a couple things to make nest copy functionally more like a version control system. We could devise an interface which allows you to view read-only copies of past versions of the nest which are organized by time of save. Then, you could adopt a past read-only version of the nest as a new editable version, effectively “reverting” to that prior state without introducing inaccuracy to the prior state.

Then, depending on how efficient our nest copy system is, we could set an auto-save interval to copy the nest periodically, or we could just force the user to save manually if we decide that increases overhead too much. Either way, it’s kinda gross, because an efficient version control system would only save changes, not the entire thing over and over again…I see why your hesitant.

2) I actually like that. I’ve wanted read-only nests for a bit. :)

I’m not really saying we’ll implement this any time soon. The development burden would be immense, for a relatively small gain.

auto-save interval to copy the nest periodically

Yea, this would be too much overhead for anything not on the order of weeks/months. I would not want all of our 1.5k nests to be auto-copying on any schedule. That would incur serious cost and performance penalties to us.

BTW, @Karl Holub , this was an ECRI request in today’s meeting; the use case is for updating clients via comparison to older versions. I strongly support the Snapshotting approach, where we basically make Nest Copies but without cluttering up AL Home. To consider: 1) Synthesis is a way higher priority than AL, and 2) This is focused on use by external parties/clients, so we should consider whether older versions should also be accessible from Synthesis.

With release 1.55.0, we’ve added backups under Settings. Due to data volume concerns:

• backups are only available for creation/restoration to our users subscribed at Business tier and above
• backups must be manually triggered

Thanks for your request and patience!