Lightroom 1.1 shows why a...

Question

Database setup like Lightroom uses is such a bad idea. Alls it takes is an
update that for whatever reason (Adobe's fault, user's fault, Gods fault)
trashes the database and you now know why so many people wanted just a file
viewer. While I myself don't trust the Lightroom database metafor and
technology well enough to do any more than to import in the photos I want to
work on, adjust them, export them and then remove them from Lightroom. I can
see where having 20,000, 40,000, 2,000, 500 or whatever number of images you
have in Lightroom lost with all of your edits could really make one cuss.
The database was and still is a mistake.
Robert

Answer 1

I've got more feedback from the engineer who worked on the upgrade. He says that it's a table-to-table copy and hence pretty much can't lose just some of the records. He said that he has been bitten a few times in looking at things by filters being active and thereby reducing what's visible. Once the filters are turned off, everything is there.
That said, there were some structural changes between 1.0 and 1.1, so maybe there's a way that copying the database tables leads to pieces of information getting orphaned, but the basic process the upgrade goes through is pretty simple.
So, check the filters. (I'm supposed to tell you a story here about how you need to blow the dust out of your cable connections, but I'm not thinking of one. The best I can offer is to say that we get bitten by filters too.) If those aren't the answer, please let us know how you diagnosed the fact that 200 images were missing.
And if all that fails, we may want your 1.0 and upgraded 1.1 databases for study if possible. (We would just need the databases, not the preview cache.)
Mark