Current Situation

General

JNCC transferred  Recorder 6  to the  Recorder 6 Consortium on 1 st April 2018  and it continues to be run by the Consortium. JNCC have relinquished all rights to the software and no longer have any involvement in the system.The JNCC website has been archived and this site (www.Recorder6.info) is now the official Recorder 6 site.  The Consortium is funded directly by its members and does not receive funding from any other source.  The Consortium  is  working closely with the new R6 Steering Group in the interest of R6 users, but is independent and not funded by or accountable to it.   (see Consortium) .  

Software

Recorder 6 can be installed and run under Windows 7 and all MS operating systems. It will install and run on Windows 10.  The latest installation version is 6.26.2. This requires  SQL Server 2008 , SQL Server 2012,  SQL Server 2014, SQL Server 2016 and SQL server 2017  be installed before the installation of R 6.  Version  6.29.0 is the latest upgrade . Compatibility level must be 80 or  100 not above). The documentation for SQL Server 2018 suggest that R6 will work with this version, but this has not been tested,

Recorder was  being supported on  SQL Server 2000 (or MSDE) and SQL Server 2005 , but  from version 6.29  it will no longer be supported on these version of SQL Server.  It may still run on these versions, but the upgrade scripts  may need to be adapted.
 

Recorder 6 will run on Virtual Servers  and is working successfully on a number of such installations.  We know of two instances where there have been problems with Virtual Servers, but these appear to be down to the set up of the servers and not to any issue with R6.

There is no  alternative system to R6 available, without the loss of important data. Unlike accounting and similar systems where transaction data can be consolidated or archived when moving to a new system,  biological recording  systems need to retain the detailed information so that it can be reviewed  in the light of new research or development.  In this context R6 is just a front end to a well designed database which contains information which needs to be retained and accessed indefinitely.  Those involved in the support of R6 are aiming to  continue supporting and developing it until such time there is a replacement system available which can be used without the loss of any information. We believe that R6 has many years life left yet, however, at some point (we are not there yet)  it may not run on the latest MS Operating system or on the latest version of SQL server.