You are obviously a Seattle Avionice fanboy intent on spreading the glory - care to tell us what position you hold within their company?
Why would you make this assumption? Because I didn't just get on your bandwagon...
Here's who I am.
I have nothing to do with Seattle Avionics other than being a customer, like you. I love my Dynon's, now HDX's, but previously Skyviews. I maintain several aircraft with Dynon equipment as well as Garmin equipment. I prefer the Dynon HDX's over Garmin G3X, and I can explain why, for whatever that is worth. But I've written, as well as used, software that looks for updated data transfers large amounts of data over sometimes sketchy transmittal systems, does synchronization with various schemes (not ever easy), and has to deal with recovering from all the things that can possibly go wrong, so that to the user it appears to "just plain work".
I only mention my experience with Garmin because I do have issues with their Garmin Express and database updating system. I've just come up with workarounds that keep me going quickly without having to spend the time troubleshooting that system.
I also have an extensive background in creating software and electronics over several decades. I don't have an MS in CS because they didn't have those degrees when I got started. Instead, I was one of the folks that helped develop the science and concepts that were taught to those students, including quality assurance techniques and processes. I've spent a good amount of my life supporting software as it was banged by users that far more often than not turned out to be wrong about it (when we dug in and found the actual causes of their issues). The reputation of the software was oftentimes tarnished nonetheless because the accusation gets more air time than the exoneration. So I'm sensitive to the developers and the criticisms they endure based on unwarranted assumptions rather than real evidence.
But finally, I am not one to complain just to complain. I have read many times criticisms of the Database Manager, without anyone actually providing any real evidence that it is bad, in any way actually. They just say they have problems/issues and declare the Database Manager crappy software. These complaints are almost always followed by many more users declaring they have had no problems with it. What I see is a select group of folks having issues, that are at best "symptoms" without any real determination of cause, blaming the so called bad software, and getting way too much air time over their assumptions.
I am quite open-minded as well, and if you have actual evidence, like performance monitor logs, system inquiry logs, traces, etc. indicating what precisely went awry when it "took long", "paused", etc. that indicate it is indeed a bug, or bugs, with the Database Manager app itself, I'll be the first to step up and declare it crap. As one of my long-time mentors would always say when someone would assume a cause without evidence, "we can know this, we just have to go looking". We can know because there exist many tools to trace and dive into what exactly goes wrong, when, and most importantly why. But without that, and no other verifiable testimony, I hate it when others assume what is to blame, especially when you're dealing with a complex problem, that has many possible factors that are much more likely the cause of the symptoms being reported.
I am certain, that if I could replicate any of the reported issues, I could dig in and determine why they occurred. But I don't have these issues. Which begs the question, "what is different for me than you?" Clearly, the Database Manager indeed works, or it wouldn't work for everybody. And without any of these users with issues doing that level of digging in, and having the result squarely pointed at the Database Manager, without making any assumptions, it is simply not right to declare it the problem. There are just too many other more likely possibilities for the reported symptoms.
And "trying things" is not troubleshooting. It is "try"ing things. We call it poking at the system. If you get the symptoms to disappear, do you know why? In a complex system, it takes tools that interrogate and look at what is happening with processes, memory, and other resources as they happen, and in what order, etc.
Finally, there is a very well-known debugging rule. It's not hard and fast, but it is a pretty good general rule. It says, if the symptom is consistent, it is likely software. If it is intermittent it is likely hardware. The symptoms being reported are clearly being reported as intermittent. I have said, and still maintain, the most probable cause of at least some of these reported issues is crappy thumb drives. Crappy ones, knock-offs, counterfeits, cheapies, whatever, will fail, and the mitigation circuitry on board can only do so much until they completely fail. They will all fail eventually. They are highly unreliable and become more so with age. But more importantly, if they are the cause, the symptoms experienced would likely be those that are being reported. The best defense here is high-quality drives that are for sure name brand and high speed (not just labeled as such because there are many counterfeits, even on Amazon).
This is who I am.
