How to survive the next Bowlsnet Disaster

Bowling News

This week's loss of the current season's data on the Bolwsnet system for over 250 bowling leagues is a huge challenge for the sport to overcome. Even now as league officials up and down the country start to come to terms with recovering weeks of results, fixtures, tables and KO competitions the threat of another disaster hasn't gone away. It has happened once and it could all happen again tomorrow and how many leagues will have learnt from yesterday's disaster? I have worked in the computer services world for over 40 years and one thing I have learnt is if there is a way for a computer system to let you down, at sometime it will.

I am sure that some leagues will give up on Bowlsnet and vow never to use any computer system ever again to collect results whilst continuing to make sense of the recovery path that will restore all the historical data that underpins the very administrative basics of our sport.

Yes, this week has been a major disaster for so many leagues and there is still a lot of work to be done to recover the lost results and fixtures, stretching the goodwill between leagues and their member clubs. Many of the leagues are relying on team's paper records as the basis for re-entering all the results. Even whilst that work goes on leagues need to be aware that more records could be lost whilst this exercise progresses. That wouldn't necessarily be down to the Bowlsnet Developer who has taken responsibility for this week's disaster. Individual League Administrators can still lose everything they are recreating by making hasty decisions even during this recovery process and costly mistakes will follow.

Established Bowlsnet League Administrators will, like me, have suffered from my own mistakes when working on the system. There have also been occasions over the years when the Bowlsnet Developer has lost data and asked leagues to recreate some records. This latest disaster isn't the first time this has happened although it is the worst such example in my experience. It probably wont be the last time we are looking to the heavens for the answer to another system crash. It doesn't have to be like that.

It needn't be at all like that on Bowlsnet. It takes a one-minute backup job once a week to avoid a repeat of this or any other loss of data disaster on the Bowlsnet system. Do that backup once a week and recovery is a 2-minute job as I found out this week.

Like many other leagues I was faced with the daunting disaster of lost records. I manage the Bowlsnet system for the Huddersfield Winter League. With all data lost from 13 January 2025 we had lost half-a season's results, along with all the league tables, player averages and all the individual competition results. Yet within 15 minutes of assessing the problem I had taken the decision to reload the back-up copy of the season that I had taken at the end of April. It took 2 minutes to recover all that data and reload it back onto the system. Job done.

It is not rocket science. The facility to back up a copy of the full system as many times as you like is built into the Bowlsnet system. League Administrators have had access to this functionality since Bowlsnet was first introduced. It is a risk-free recovery. I show you how further down this page.

I have been a League Administrator every season since 2014 so have been a Bowlsnet League Administrator for 12 years. I was responsible for being the first Huddersfield area league to use the system when introduced to the Huddersfield Veterans League in 2014. Starting from scratch to build the 6-Man and 10-Man Leagues on Bowlsnet. Then subsequently building the Huddersfield Winter League version on Bowlsnet in 2020 and I have continued to use the system every season since.

It is not the easiest system to use that I have ever come across but it is a function-rich application which is well worth the investment in time taken to build the system to serve the needs of the leagues I have been involved with over the years.

It probably helps that my day-job over the last 44 years has been running computer services in a number of large hospitals up and down the country. The realisation that getting things wrong on computer-driven devices that are keeping patients alive can kill people is a tremendous driver to being careful and not making mistakes.

Disaster Recovery Planning has always been an important tool in minimising the impact of any such disasters. I brought that experience to bowling and the building of all the Bowlsnet systems for leagues I have been involved with over the last 12 years.

From year 1 of building Bowlsnet systems I have taken a weekly backup of all the data on these systems. It takes one-minute each time. It is a feature of Bowlsnet that there is a button to press to copy all the live data to your home computer or laptop. Here is how to do it.

League Administrators of Bowlsnet will recognise this screen from the system.

First of all take the system offline. Then in the bottom left hand column there is a button labelled Download Season (to your computer). Press that button and it asks where you would like to SAVE a copy of the system. Choose a File Folder (or better still create a new one and call it 'Bowlsnet Backups'). Give your copy a name (e.g. Bowlsnet08062025) and save the file.

That's it all done. Your live system will continue to operate exactly as it had done before you took the backup. You can take a copy as frequently as you like. During normal times I take a weekly copy after all the week's results have been submitted by the teams. These are not normal times and you make care to take several copies each day as teams submit results from their paper records. It is a good habit to get into. You can keep the naming structure the same date-based as shown in the example above and add a suffix of A, B or C etc. to cover multiple copies.

Should you then ever need to restore data after a system crash or by your own mistake then it is a simple task to reload your saved copy back onto the system, overwriting the incorrect or missing data on your system.

The same Administrator page as above is the means to uploading your saved copy to overwrite the malfunctioning version. The button labelled 'Upload Season (from your computer)' is used. It asks what copy you would like to upload to the system. Choose the latest copy you have and the job is done.

Steve Blaymire is the Bowlsnet Developer and his latest posting indicates that local backups are the most secure way of protecting your data for the future. Steve says ...

Sorry everyone, I know this is a disaster for all of us.

All BowlsNet Databases have been wiped from the server and all recent backups lost.

I have restored databases and archives back to their January '25 state.

If you have a recent backup of your own then please upload it, or in the worst case start a new season and re-enter your fixtures.

Once you have restored your fixtures, you can start re-entering results (you will also have to re-enter any players that have been added this season and possibly correct user passwords). If you set the Result Entry Period: (for Team Administrators) to CATCH-UP, then captains will be able to enter their lost results themselves. Hopefully this will never happen again, but nobody can guarantee it 100%.

I highly recommend saving regular backups to your device, but most importantly ones at important milestones (such as when fixtures are generated).

This gives us distributed backups, which is far more resilient to any kind of problem.

Steve Blaymire, Bowlsnet Developer

There will always be mistakes and computer disasters and Bowlsnet is not immune from those whether they be caused by the League Administrator or the System Developer. Make sure that you are not going through this traumatic experience again at the next system fail. Set up your own Disaster Recovery Plan now by taking your own system backup. It really is as easy as shown above. You don't have to face your League and club friends again with another sob story about the system. Be a Boy Scout again and 'BE PREPARED' and you will not regret it.