Tags in hierarchy disappeared... Say what?!?

I’m hoping that it was just a messed up database, but I had something really odd happen a few minutes ago…

In a library that I’ve not had open in a while (about 3 months) I had all except the topmost level of tags in the tags hierarchy disappear. All but the basic tags were neatly tucked away based on their usage in the hierarchy so the net effect was that all of my tags on the about 8000 objects in the library went AWOL. The top level tags are all still there though.

I’m wondering if there’s something that changed with the SQLlite database structure (Contents.db), as I’m not able to open the database file in SQLlite manager any more either; it claims the database is corrupted on an unknown format.

Sadly, I don’t have a backup of the files that are in this library so the tagging work on those objects is gone for good. No huge loss as it was more of a concept test project than production at this point.

Did you try to open it in SQLite Manager while it was already open in EagleFiler? If not, it sounds like your database file is damaged. (Although it seems strange that EagleFiler would be able to open it at all.)

In a situation like this, the first thing you should do is close the library and make a copy of it. EagleFiler backs up the tags to XML files and also to the files’ extended attributes. So if you close the library before the next backup, you can simply reconstruct a new library using the backed up metadata.

Nope. Eaglefiler was closed completely before I tried accessing the file with SQLite manager.

No joy with that as well. I checked the Plist files and there are no tags listed except any unread tags that were already present.