OKB-100: Onfolio 1.01 technical summary

Onfolio 1.01 (3474) is an update to Onfolio 1.0 (3429) that changes how Onfolio interacts with Windows structured storage.

Onfolio stores captured content and properties, such as name and comment, in collections. Collections are files that use Microsoft Windows structured storage. Structured storage is a flexible and very reliable way to store complex information, and it has been a part of Windows since 1989. It is a file format that is relied on throughout the Microsoft Office System and in a variety of other applications including CAD systems, design tools, and other Windows software.

Onfolio 1.0 used a mechanism that took advantage of a Windows in-memory data buffer which made interactions with structured storage slightly faster. After the release of Onfolio 1.0, we learned that under certain circumstances on some Windows configurations, using the data buffer can be less reliable than writing directly to the structured storage file, which is the standard way applications use structure storage.

Onfolio 1.01 removes the use of the data buffer. Removing this functionality is a simple change that returns Onfolio to a configuration we tested extensively during our beta test period.

We believe the Onfolio 1.01 use of structured storage is highly reliable. For example, in our quality assurance lab we were able to reproduce a problem with the data buffer in Onfolio 1.0. When Windows experienced a catastrophic system failure (blue screen) while information was being saved by Onfolio 1.0 to a collection, the collection would occasionally be rendered unusable. With Onfolio 1.01, this same scenario does not damage the collection. If the save is not completed before the system crash, the saved information will not be saved, but the collection will still be fully usable.