Just to inform you that:

Although in the SAM Broadcaster change log is reported:

* Improved MySQL v8 support.

Starting from version 2019.3 (27 August 2019)...

In case of issue what the support team tell you is:

"I would refer you to the word "improved". This is not a fully supported option."

English is not my main language, but in my opinion if in the change log you write:
" Improved MySQL v8 support" means that you're going to fully support it.

As always, this program does not prove to be a reliable tool in the professional field and the support is only ready to tell you that to solve a problem you have to uninstall and change the database.

I'm sorry this time I'm going to ask refund and write all my experience (I'm paying since 2008) in Trustpilot.

Mind sharing with the community what the problem with MySQL 8 was?

I've dumped MySQL in favor of MariaDB in the last project about 3 years ago and haven't yet had to use MySQL with SAM since, but can completely understand being unsatisfied with such a response. I was also under the impression, that MySQL is still a supported configuration for SAM and what if not the latest stable version are you supposed to use? Noone in their right mind would go to dev.mysql.com and then search for older versions of the database server.

_________________
Benedikt Bauer - SVS (Spacial Volunteer Support)

Shop for readymade PAL scripts by countrywesterndj - Or get a custom script made by me (or others)

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Hi, I would like share to you but....I have not idea what to share because in my personal opinion it's not a DB issue but a SAM issue.

assumption:

I'm using SAM since 2008. I'm currently running it on 2 different server (and I'm paying x 2 License also to have 4 setup):

Server 1: SAM 2018.2 (the last to works fine with Shoutcat v.1) + Windows 2012 + MySQL 5
Server 2: SAM 2020.4 (A new one) + Windows 2019 + MySQL 8

I've switched from server 1 to server 2 after months of tests. I've installed MYSQL 8 instead of 5 because MySQL5 is next to end-of-life and I preferred to setup the latest version even because before today I supposed was 100% supported by SAM.

Issue:

On server 2:

Today suddenly SAM stops working and gets freeze.
1) I restart the server but nothing....SAM still freeze in start up at "creating general objects" phase.
2) I re-install SAM (without uninstall it) but nothing change

Inside of the Eventlog file I can find this:

Line: 65
<aim>NA</aim><icq>NA</icq><irc>#audiorea)
X 2020-07-21 12:04:37 [CORE] Unhandled exception (Access violation at address 008307E7 in module 'SAMBC.exe'. Read of address 00000000)
N 2020-07-21 12:26:14 [CORE] Shutdown complete.
I 2020-07-21 13:09:46 [CORE] Logger created
X 2020-07-21 13:09:46 [CORE] Unhandled exception (An invalid character was found in text content.

3) I take the last DB dumps of few days ago and I restore SAMDB. But nothing...SAM is not starting again.

In all of this scenario, technical support (paid), the only solution that can provide you it's:

- Uninstall SAM
- Change DB (because I'm sorry but MySQL 8 is not fully supported)
- Reinstall SAM

That's not a solution in my opinion. It's just a work around.

Why did SAM stop?
Why despite the restore of the DB Dump still does not restart?

Ohh damn. Really sorry about your experience with the company.
I knew their support had become worse after Ando Media took over and every last person of the old company has left, but this is bad even for their standard.

Your problem looks strange, but if Spacial has added support for MySQL 8 at all, they should be supporting both the new authentication mechanism and the new default charset. (The latter shouldn't be a problem if you upgraded the server in place, but might be if you're starting from a new database schema in case SAM doesn't support 4 Byte multibyte UTF8 characters yet)

I'll probably have time to test this later tonight if you're still looking for a fix. (Though, the fix might include changing settings on your server in case SAM isn't compatible with things)

_________________
Benedikt Bauer - SVS (Spacial Volunteer Support)

Shop for readymade PAL scripts by countrywesterndj - Or get a custom script made by me (or others)

My Project:
Send "Now Playing" from SAM to Twitter and/or Facebook | Sourcecode

I didn't know there had been a change of management.

Undoubtedly this level of support is not professional and I will go on my way. I have provided logs, and dumps. I want an incident report otherwise the refund of my annual assistance fee.

In the meantime, I update you:

The issue is not the DB but the file sam.core corrupted.
I have uninstalled SAM (but not the DB), saving the settings folder before.
After a full fresh setup SAM start again to works (with the same DB).
If I replace sam.core with the old one, SAM start to hang again.

So I want further explanations from the support: Why did they tell me that the problem was definitely the DB?

Meantime I start to prepare my article for TrustPilot and request a refund from PayPal. Then maybe they'll surprise me with a detailed report...but I don't think so.

It's been a while (I think 2013), they were bought by the world's largest radio advertising solution company Ando Media who did exactly nothing with this new asset in their portfolio other than discontinue any ad insertion software and features SAM has had before. I've got no idea if SAM was really such a major competition to them or if they originally had different plans, but I can see so many options to benefit from each other just from the outside and they did absolutely nothing in that regard.
On the contrary, they let go of the founders of the company and slowly but steadily all people from the support, sales and technical team that have at least sometimes interacted with the community before.
I only started being really active in the forums about a year or two before the company was sold, but before that time you could easily get someone with deeper technical knowledge either on the forums or via support tickets. These days it's looking more like noone over there is aware of all the features or has even used SAM themselves before.


Probably because you already narrowed it down to the DB and they just took over from there without considering alternative solutions.
That happens to the best and there's nothing you can do about it. I think they should've tried to diagnose the actual problem with the database, though, and not just wave the problem away, but that's just my personal opinion.


I wish you luck, but I don't think your chances are high.
They delivered the license key and the activation is working on a fresh install. Even more so if you use the known-good-configuration (i.e. embedded Firebird Database).
As far as I know, that's enough for them to fullfill the requirements of the PayPal buyer/merchant protection warranty.

As for review sites: I sincerely doubt they care much about that. There's just very little competition in this market and the market itself is relatively small, I guess they don't get many users coming in from a rating site or even looking at one first.


That doesn't mean you shouldn't try that and shouldn't write down your experience. From what you reported here their support was awful and left you on your own to figure out what the actual problem was. That's pretty much the opposite of what a dedicated support team is there for. But I've heard many reports very similar to this one before and therefore am pessimistic about changing this in the future.

_________________
Benedikt Bauer - SVS (Spacial Volunteer Support)

Shop for readymade PAL scripts by countrywesterndj - Or get a custom script made by me (or others)

My Project:
Send "Now Playing" from SAM to Twitter and/or Facebook | Sourcecode

I remember very well the level of technical support that was there before: They asked you for logs, database dumps and sometimes they even gave me "beta" versions of SAM to try to solve the problems. I do not expect that the technical service has the magic wand, but that at least it shows that you want to help solve the problem expecially if you are paying an annual fee for it.

I know I don't have much hope of getting my money back, but I'm doing just to highlight outside of customer care team that they are doing a bad job.

To my request: "Please, can you provide me with a more detailed incident report following my problem?"

You can't answer like this:

"That is not something we would ever be able to determine unfortunately. To investigate this you would need to ship us your computer for a complete forensic investigation."

I am ashamed of them.

Lolwut?
That is either pure incompetence (I'm really trying to apply Hanlon's Razor here and not say they should overthink their job choice as customer service, but this quote makes it really hard)

_________________
Benedikt Bauer - SVS (Spacial Volunteer Support)

Shop for readymade PAL scripts by countrywesterndj - Or get a custom script made by me (or others)

My Project:
Send "Now Playing" from SAM to Twitter and/or Facebook | Sourcecode