We are launching a new support article series here on Vamsoft Insider, written by the ORF technical support guy, Krisztian (that would be me :). In these series I will provide in-depth answers for common ORF support questions and share my tips & tricks of using ORF. The first part of these series is about the databases of ORF, hope you will find it useful.
Databases in ORF
ORF has some features which rely on databases, namely the Auto Sender Whitelist, the Greylisting, the DHA protection and the Honeypot features (the latter two was introduced in version 4.3). SQL support the ORF databases was introduced in ORF version 4.0, and we encourage switching to an external SQL database ever since, as it has more benefits than drawbacks (for starters, you can see the actual database contents).
Of course, setting up a database can be a pain sometime (probably that is why most people uses the default Private Local database option, which requires no manual setup), but we provide step by step guides and scripts at our database guide page to ease the process as much as possible. If you ever experienced problems with the private local databases (e.g. occasional database corruption issues) or want more control over the database contents, switching to SQL is strongly recommended.
How will I know if my local databases are corrupted?
The symptoms of database corruption issues are
- “Error EABSException cleaning up expired database items. Database: (Auto Sender Whitelist | Greylisting | Honeypot | DHA)” error messages in the ORF logs
- “Unexpected (Auto Sender Whitelist | Greylisting | Honeypot | DHA) error. EAccessViolation […]” error messages in the ORF logs
I see the above mentioned error messages, what should I do?
It is advised to perform a repair on the affected database and to migrate the database to SQL.
How can I repair the corrupted local database files in the ORF Administration Tool?
Auto Sender Whitelist: Configuration / Tests / Auto Sender Whitelist / Database / Manage
Greylisting: Configuration / Filtering – Before Arrival / Database / Manage
Honeypot: Configuration / Tests / Honeypot test / Database / Manage
DHA: Configuration / Tests / DHA protection test / Database / Manage
How to setup the SQL database?
Please see our guides regarding this at http://www.vamsoft.com/dbguides.asp If you do not have any SQL servers installed, we suggest using the free Microsoft SQL Server Express products. If you use them for ORF only, these free editions are sufficient.
How to migrate all data from the current (local) databases to the external one (SQL)?
To migrate all information from the local databases (ABS files), you should use our Database Converter Tool (can be downloaded from http://www.vamsoft.com/vsdbconvert/). Note that you will need to have the SQL server prepared to receive the contents of the local databases.
How can I view the database contents?
We suggest using the free Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio Tool (see the guides regarding this tool).