Category:Cumulus Files

Cumulus uses a number of files to configure Cumulus, log data, to report diagnostics, and hold output from Cumulus. Many of these files are described in pages accessed from sub-categories below, but there are some pages linked directly from this page.

The pages that are associated with this category include some pages related to a Cumulus folder name, some pages describing Cumulus files identified by their filename, and some pages that relate to actions that you can do on the files (like amending them).

It is perhaps worth reporting that in 2007-08, Steve Loft was in the process of changing his original Cumulus to use a SQL database to store the data. However, before and after that experiment the data was stored in Standard text files. He wrote in the forum (Mon 23 Jun 2008 11:34 am) "I did have have a 'branch' of Cumulus in development which used an SQL database to store the data, and a bonus with storing the data this way was a nice spreadsheet-type display to allow you to edit any of the values easily and safely. It could also export the data (or ranges thereof) in various formats, e.g. Excel. But I had a few problems with the database software, so I abandoned it. I may have a go at putting it back in at some point, but that might not be until Cumulus 2."

When Steve Loft started Cumulus 3 (became MX), he conducted a poll in the support forum asking if people preferred text files or MySQL tables to store data. The response was that the majority of people found both useful, together with a suggestion that "SQLite3" was a simpler way to store database tables than MySQL. Anyway, MX has implemented the text files listed for this category, the SQLite3 files with a .db extension listed for this category, and supports MariaDB (or MySQL) on an external database server.