Why are there so many zip files in my database? [Answered: see thread]
 

Forgive me if I've missed something here but I've not been able to find an answer to this problem on the forums:

No matter how many times I sync, run the "coalesce database" script or use the new "compact database" feature on Omnifocus for iPhone, I simply cannot stop my Omnifocus folder on iDisk from filling up with .zip files. Since my latest reset yesterday (when I erased the whole Omnifocus folder from iDisk and re-uploaded the latest data from my main machine), the number has grown to 98, covering 557 tasks.

NB: I run OF on three devices: my Macbook Air (running Leopard), my iMac at work (running Tiger) and my iPhone. All are synced regularly via MobileMe. I've read that databases of more than 500 tasks can be problematic, but have to say I don't think that's a particularly high number of tasks for a comprehensive GTD system. Also, I only have a handful of tasks with files attached, and those files are pretty small.

I'm not suffering any loss of functionality as a result of all this – still loving the product, after a brief flirtation with Things – but the syncing speed is obviously very slow. Any advice much appreciated.

When you say all are synced regularly... does that mean you are syncing and then shutting one down?

Example, syncing your home computer then shutting the home computer down when you go to work?

I found I need to leave all three OF applications up and running.
As long al all your clients have synced within an hour of each other, the compaction should happen.

You can check this by viewing the clients from the sync OF preference.

On a side note... it sounds like data compaction may be happening all the time in the beta version of OF and the new iPhone version.

If you haven't done so yet, I would send in a support request by selecting:
help -> send feedback from the OmniFocus desktop menu.

The number of zip files isn't directly related to the number of tasks you have: you could have a few tasks stored in 15,000 zip files, or 15,000 tasks stored in one zip file. (At the moment, I personally have 1,745 tasks in 171 zip files.)

Each zip file represents a change that is being synchronized to other copies of OmniFocus on other machines. (We often refer these changes to using database/finance terminology, calling them "transactions", and we often refer to the different copies of OmniFocus as your "sync clients.") Once every sync client has had an opportunity to see a change, it gets compacted into the "root" transaction (the one whose filename starts with 0), which records the common history which every sync client has already seen.

In other words, the number of zip files you have is directly related to how often you make changes and how long it's been since you've synced each client.

--

OmniFocus is aggressively paranoid about whether a sync client has seen a change or not, so when a client syncs (and writes a new status update of where it is) it leaves an old status update around for at least an hour just in case another client is also in the middle of syncing (possibly over a slow EDGE network) and might be trying to read the old status. What that means in practice is that a sync client doesn't only tie down the transactions it currently needs to get caught up, it also ties down the transactions it needed prior to its last sync. So if I only sync my laptop once every week, I might have two weeks of transactions tied down by those client records.

We're looking at trying to improve how often we're willing to compact old changes, but we have to err on the side of caution: if we don't compact frequently enough, syncing will be slow--but if we compact too frequently, syncing could lose data that a sync client still needs!

--

There's another problem we're trying to solve: right now, we're only able to compact segments of synced history when they converge to a single branch of changes. I'll explain this in more detail (with graphs!) in a future post.

--

More importantly, compacting down to fewer zip files isn't the only way to speed up sync processing. In fact, it's not the most important way! It does help, of course, but the real problem is that if you sync a remote change which is earlier than your latest local change, we don't have a good way to apply that to your current database (which has been modified from what the other client would have seen), so we end up rebuilding your database from scratch. Rebuilding the database means we have to reprocess every transaction, and that's where lots of transactions makes syncing slow—but it would be even better if we could just apply the minimal set of changes to your existing database to get it into the right state. (Having 15,000 zip files of history matters a lot less if you're only having to look at the last few of them!)

That's the problem I'm solving right now—and in my explorations so far, it makes a huge difference. (No more "Updating with synced data" screens on the iPhone!) But before I can feel comfortable unleashing this optimized sync code on the world, I have lots of testing to do to prove that the incremental changes we're making are getting it to the exact same state as rebuilding the database would.

Thanks for the explanation Ken. It helps to hear about what is going on in the background of the syncing. I also appreciate the care that Omni takes with placing data integrity high on the priorities.

Thanks Ken. Much appreciated.

iPhone app load time
 

Omnifocus takes forever to load on my iphone which has confused me for some time since I have few available/remaining tasks. With your latest update, I think I found the culprit: my database has 70 projects and 1744 actions stored in 106 zip files.

Is there any way to remove all the completed actions and projects from the sync database without removing them from the database on my computer? I like being able to see when I completed tasks and details on those tasks, but I really don't need all of this on my iphone bungling it all up.

Perhaps I'm wrong on this being the culprit.... any advice/help would be appreciated.

Thanks!

You are correct, that it is the culprit - 106 zip files is a [I]lot[/I].

There are two ways to make sure that this doesn't occur:

1. Synch both your iPhone and Mac with each other twice each within an hour to make sure the database is compacted.

2. Make use of the Archiving feature in the Desktop version to reduce the size of your active database - however, be warned that this means that you will not be able to see older (you get to define just how old) completed actions on your iPhone so don't do this if that is of high importance to your workflow*.

To do so:

1. Select the [B]Move Old Data to Archive...[/B] option from the [B]File[/B] menu:

[img]http://homepage.mac.com/jtyzack/.Pictures/screenshots/OFMoveArchive.jpg[/img]

2. Choose the date that you wish to archive back from:

[img]http://homepage.mac.com/jtyzack/.Pictures/screenshots/OFArchivedate.jpg[/img]
(N.B. As I recently did this I don't have any old data to archive)

3. If and when you need to see any of that data, select the [B]Open[/B] archive option in the [B]File[/B] menu (below the selected option in the screenshot in 1. above).

Note, it is quite seamless to view archived data and to perform this.

Personally, I do this at the start of each month and have a repeating task in OmniFocus to remind me to do it.

* added for the benefit of anyone else reading, btw, as this isn't important to you!

Thanks...
 

this is exactly was I was searching for. Good luck!

I just started using OFI and i have 647 zip files, sync is very slow, much slower than Remember The Milk.

And because i dont have old items, i have nothing to archive.

It sounds like one of the machines you're syncing with hasn't done so in a while. We don't actually remove transactions from the server until all the machines know about them, so if one of the machines has not synced in a while, the transactions build up until they do.

If you press the "Show Clients" button in Sync preferences on one of your Macs, what is the oldest date that appears in the Latest Sync column? If it's more than a week or so, that's what's going on here. Sync the device(s) in question and within a couple of hours, you should see the number of zip files drop.

Great! i removed all synced devices, etc, and started from scratch, and now have 1 zip file, and its about 10x faster!

Thanks.

Personally, I hope this can be automated in the Preferences in an upcoming release; I don't like having to "manage" my database.

Just sayin! It would be a nice knowing that it's archiving every week (or whatever I set it at).

I have a monthly recurring task to do it as part of my monthly top-level review. It's not so bad, plus I can imagine some people like to be able to search back through old tasks (I don't - once they're done they're off my plate!).

How do I get rid of these zip files and speed up OF on my iPhone?
 

Hello,
I'm pretty new to OmniFocus, and now that I've gotten it down a little, I'm liking it a lot and finding it very helpful.
My iPhone tells me that I somehow have 987 zip files, though I just verified that my computer and phone are the only clients and that both have been synced very recently. They have also been frequently synced prior to that. I have very little to archive as I've just gotten started with OF. Any advice would be very much appreciated. I also want to mention that I've been extremely impressed with the forums, both in terms of contributions from users and people at Omni. One really gets the sense we are in good hands!

Added subsequently:The problem seems to have been solved! I had not yet purchased a license -- was still on the free trial -- and I guess that was preventing it from getting rid of all those zips.

I'd be really interested in figuring out what caused the database to compact - maybe your trial license expired on the desktop? While it's running in trial mode, OmniFocus behaves exactly like it does with a purchased license. I guess if the trial had expired, you'd be prevented from doing any more syncs...

<brian wanders off, vaguely confused and muttering to himself, in search of caffeine.>

[QUOTE=Brian;58515]I'd be really interested in figuring out what caused the database to compact - maybe your trial license expired on the desktop? While it's running in trial mode, OmniFocus behaves exactly like it does with a purchased license. I guess if the trial had expired, you'd be prevented from doing any more syncs...

<brian wanders off, vaguely confused and muttering to himself, in search of caffeine.>[/QUOTE]

Figman wanders in laughing and thinking to himself "if only Omni's Ninja's could be cloned and shipped off to his other software vendors...Then he could have quality software with reliability and an actual responsiveness from their tech support...if only...if only"...and then he hands Brian a Venti coffee.

There's something funny going on with my OF database. I sync OF between three Macs and an iPhone using mobileme. Sync works, but is slow on the iPhone. iPhone reports 167 zip files (!).

I turned off sync with all Macs, reset database on iPhone. I rebuilt the database on one Mac, and then turned syncing back on. I enabled sync on the phone. I did several syncs on the one mac and the phone without changing the contents of the database, but the number of zip files would only stay the same.

I had hoped this would let the number of zip files go down to something small, since the one computer and the phone would be perfectly in sync, with no other devices lagging. This didn't happen.

What am I missing?

Using OF 1.6 (not the sneakypeaks) and iPhone OF 1.2.2, so I think I'm using the latest release versions.

[QUOTE=jgastin;58843]There's something funny going on with my OF database. I sync OF between three Macs and an iPhone using mobileme. Sync works, but is slow on the iPhone. iPhone reports 167 zip files (!).

I turned off sync with all Macs, reset database on iPhone. I rebuilt the database on one Mac, and then turned syncing back on. I enabled sync on the phone. I did several syncs on the one mac and the phone without changing the contents of the database, but the number of zip files would only stay the same.

I had hoped this would let the number of zip files go down to something small, since the one computer and the phone would be perfectly in sync, with no other devices lagging. This didn't happen.

What am I missing?

Using OF 1.6 (not the sneakypeaks) and iPhone OF 1.2.2, so I think I'm using the latest release versions.[/QUOTE]
Arghh. My last sync just sent the number of zips to 219.

I assume you've already done this, but open up Sync preferences on one of your macs and check the "Show Sync Clients" button. Are there duplicate entries or stale entries in the list? If so, you want to remove dupes and/or have the other machines sync to catch up.

If all dupes are removed and your devices are all caught up, you should see your database shrink after the first sync that's an hour later. (There are technical reasons that I can never remember when I'm writing one of these posts why we need to leave the files there for an hour.)

Turning sync off on a device doesn't do anything on the sync server. We leave all the files in place. You want to open up the Sync prefs and unregister it instead.

You may want to contact the support ninjas and let them lend a hand.

[QUOTE=Brian;58211]We don't actually remove transactions from the server until all the machines know about them, so if one of the machines has not synced in a while, the transactions build up until they do.[/QUOTE]

This is a Very Good Thing to know-- I had my iPhone replaced under warranty after having using OFiP... OF kept warning me that I hadn't synced my iPhone in a long time, but I ignored it as a glitch, since I was syncing all the time...

Well, finally I figured out that OF keeps track of iPhone clients by serial number, or something... When I looked at the registered clients, there were TWO iPhones listed... I deleted the old unsynced iPhone and all is good again.

Just an FYI in case someone replaces their iPhone and forgets to unregister the old one in OF-- your database will not be compacted until you do!

[QUOTE=Brian;58865]I assume you've already done this, but open up Sync preferences on one of your macs and check the "Show Sync Clients" button. Are there duplicate entries or stale entries in the list? If so, you want to remove dupes and/or have the other machines sync to catch up.

If all dupes are removed and your devices are all caught up, you should see your database shrink after the first sync that's an hour later. (There are technical reasons that I can never remember when I'm writing one of these posts why we need to leave the files there for an hour.)
[/QUOTE]

I've kept the sync devices list down to four actual and current devices, and all sync most days. No duplicate or stale items.

The hour delay business is unexpected and weird, but now that I let the database rest for an hour, my number of zip files has indeed gone down. It's something like 50, but that's much better than 200.

Thanks.

Re-titling thread to hopefully make more findable.

[QUOTE=Toadling;57276]Syncing seems to be working fine here -- no problems at all on 1.6 for my MacBook Pro and 1.2.1 for iPhone.

How many zipped transaction files are in your database? You can view this info by right-clicking on your database file and selecting "Show Package Contents". Or on the iPhone, tap the info button and scroll down.

As a point of comparison, I currently have 212 projects and 1821 actions stored in 7 zip files on my iPhone. Depending on how recently I've synced, it takes anywhere from about 1.5 seconds to 30 seconds to complete a sync on my iPhone via MobileMe over WiFi.

-Dennis[/QUOTE]

Where can I find more information about reducing the number of zip files? I sync frequently on both Mac and iPhone, archive old data every week or so, and yet with 33 projects and 173 actions I have a whopping [B]431 zip files[/B].

My iPhone sync (through MobileMe) sometimes takes up to five minutes to complete, and I suspect this is the culprit.

edit: Whoa, I just did my fifth or sixth sync of the day, playing around to try to get a handle on things. Suddenly, before my eyes, my iPhone dropped down to 3 zip files. Strange; I don't get it, but if it stays low and my sync times stay fast, I'll be happy.

v1.6.1 for Mac & v1.2.3 for iPhone both contain a change that makes it easier for compactions to occur than it was in previous releases of OmniFocus. I suspect you just benefitted from that change. :-)

I sent an email to the Ninjas, but thought I'd post here in case someone has any advice.

- I just bought OmniFocus for Mac Desktop and OmniFocus for iPhone (I'm using iPhone 3G on AT&T) this week.
- Been using them for about 2-3 days now.
- I'm sync'ing via WebDAV using the free SwissDisk account I found mentioned on the forums
- I'm sync'ing ONLY my Macbook desktop client and the iPhone together - nothing else.

My iphone sync is taking 30-45 seconds or so (to sometimes a couple minutes) (even on WiFi). I checked my stats and they were showing:
- 15 projects
- 44 actions
- stored in 267 zip files

Then I found advice in this thread to sync both clients twice each within one hour. So I sync'd both of them twice, alternating from Macbook to iphone sync, and did all these syncs back to back to compact the database. Now my stats show:
-17 projects
- 51 actions
- stored in 299 zip files!!

Why in the world would I have almost 300 zip files? I have nothing to archive - I just started using the software 2 days ago. I've only crossed off about 6-8 actions as complete.

I will note that I have had TWO crashes of OmniFocus on my Mac after I open my Macbook and it's been hibernated. Maybe that's a culprit?

Every time you make a change to an action or a project, you create another zip file. The total number of actions and projects you have is mostly irrelevant to the zip file count. What matters is how many changes you make between database compactions. More frequent syncing of all your devices tends to cause more frequent compactions.

Fireproof, crashes shouldn't cause a problem with the sync process - it's designed in such a manner that unexpectedly quitting the sync early doesn't cause problems. It just picks up where it left off next time it syncs. (If your crash reports were sent in and you'd like the support ninja to have a look at them, they'll be happy to do so.)

That said, if you open the Sync prefs on your Mac and press the "Show Clients" button, how many entries appear in that list, and what's the earliest "Last Synced" date?

As Bill mentioned, changes create new zip files. In addition to changes you make yourself, changes the software does on it's own will also create zip files. (Examples: when an action goes from unavailable to available, or from due soon to overdue.)

In general, any files that both the Mac and iPhone know about should go away if they're at least an hour old. It's possible that those zip files are just being created very quickly as you move stuff around and settle in to OmniFocus.

I don't think you're seeing a number of files that are way out of line with normal but if you see the number of files go up and up without ever getting smaller, let us know and we're happy to investigate.

As to sync times, some of it is undoubtedly the phone, but if the server is just taking a while to respond, that's not something we can address in the app. It's not uncommon for me to see sync times like that when I sync with my iDisk, for example.

[QUOTE=Brian;64109]Fireproof, crashes shouldn't cause a problem with the sync process - it's designed in such a manner that unexpectedly quitting the sync early doesn't cause problems. It just picks up where it left off next time it syncs. (If your crash reports were sent in and you'd like the support ninja to have a look at them, they'll be happy to do so.)[/quote]

Thanks for the note Brian - that's great to know. I did submit the crash report just in case (since it happened twice).

[quote]
That said, if you open the Sync prefs on your Mac and press the "Show Clients" button, how many entries appear in that list, and what's the earliest "Last Synced" date?
[/quote]

Just two are listed as mentioned above - my Macbook Pro and my iPhone. And when I checked this earlier, the latest sync times were both just 5 minutes prior and the same because I had re-sync'd a few times trying to make sure everything was sync'd and compact.

[quote]
As Bill mentioned, changes create new zip files. In addition to changes you make yourself, changes the software does on it's own will also create zip files. (Examples: when an action goes from unavailable to available, or from due soon to overdue.)

In general, any files that both the Mac and iPhone know about should go away if they're at least an hour old. It's possible that those zip files are just being created very quickly as you move stuff around and settle in to OmniFocus.

I don't think you're seeing a number of files that are way out of line with normal but if you see the number of files go up and up without ever getting smaller, let us know and we're happy to investigate.

As to sync times, some of it is undoubtedly the phone, but if the server is just taking a while to respond, that's not something we can address in the app. It's not uncommon for me to see sync times like that when I sync with my iDisk, for example.[/QUOTE]

Okay - thanks for all the info and advice. I'm sure you guys are tired of answering the same things over and over. I just wanted to make sure nothing was out of whack.

My zip file count has stabilized at 300. So I don't have a runaway zip file problem. And FWIW, my sync time now is suddenly much faster. So I'm wondering if most of it was just a server issue this afternoon.

I was just concerned that my files were out of whack. Hopefully it's just a false alarm.

Apart from being a sync'ing newbie - I love both pieces of software and the money was well spent. Can't wait to get really fluent with everything!

Thanks again.

My advice is to leave OmniFocus open on your Desktop as much as possible and then on your iPhone overnight (assuming you leave it plugged in and charging). I find that, normally, when I wake up in the morning my database has compacted down to 1 or 2 zip files.

[QUOTE=JKT;64126]My advice is to leave OmniFocus open on your Desktop as much as possible and then on your iPhone overnight (assuming you leave it plugged in and charging). I find that, normally, when I wake up in the morning my database has compacted down to 1 or 2 zip files.[/QUOTE]

OOh - that's interesting. I'll do it tonight and report back. :)

I think I'm having the runaway zip file problem. I've currently got 1900 zip files and am syncing between two Macs and one iPhone. All devices have synced within the last hour, and sync regularly and I don't have any 'stale' clients in my list.

I'm not able to force all clients to sync twice within the same hour as one user suggested, because the two Macs are at home and work, with more than one hour of travel time between them.

The 'Compact Database' item is greyed out for me and I've recently archived old items.

Is there anything else I can try to speed things back up? It generally takes 3-4 minutes to sync the iPhone on wifi. I love OmniFocus... love the sync... but would really like to keep things running smoothly.

Many thanks in advance!

Regards,
Gary

We'll be making a change for upcoming builds that will give the database more opportunities to compact, even with a setup like you're using, Gary. Once we get those builds out the door, this should be less of an issue.

In the meantime, though, you can force a compaction. Make sure all your devices are up to date/synced, then do the following:

Open Sync prefs on one of your Macs.
Press "Show Clients".
Unregister all clients, even the one for the Mac you're doing this on.
Set sync method to "Nothing".
Restart OmniFocus. The "Compact Database" menu item will now be active.
Use it to compact your database.
Turn Sync back on and start a sync - you'll push the compacted database up to the server.

The next time you sync the other two devices, they may ask if you want to use the "Local" or "Server" database. It's very important that you answer [B]Server[/B].

Does that help?

Much better!
 

Thanks Brian,

Yes. This workaround has really sped things up. Many thanks for this... Now I can address the slowdowns in the future, but I'll sure be looking forward to the update that automates this.

Thanks again!

According to the release notes, 1.7 adds the above-mentioned improvements to provide more opportunities for database compaction. I am on a three-client setup (Mac, Mac, iPhone), and am seeing unreasonable ZIP file numbers (650 and climbing) with OmniFocus 1.7.1 on both Macs.

Any suggestions for how to take advantage of the sync improvements?

As a general point of feedback, the current syncing implementation requires the user to be [i]far[/i] too conscious of the sync implementation to avoid ballooning sync databases and sluggish performance. Any sync implementation that is unable to deal with the scenario of a user syncing each of the registered clients on a daily basis is, I suggest, broken by design.

Kevin, has your sync behavior improved at all? I'm also running 1.7.1, also with 3 clients, and suffering from a ballooning database despite frequent syncs from all 3 clients. Have you contacted the support ninjas about your case? Maybe there's a commonality between our cases that might help lead the developers to the problem. I don't think it is as simple as just having 3 clients, as I know Ken runs at least that many and presumably would have noticed the issue himself.

My database did finally compact itself in a recent sync. I have no idea what finally convinced it to do so. My ZIP file count is now steadily climbing once more.

I'm another person with the runaway zip file problem: 194 projects, 394 actions, 1266 zip files. Startup on the iPhone takes about 7 seconds. Sync'ing takes ... a long time.

I use OmniFocus with one Macbook Pro and one iPhone. I usually sync them twice or more times a day, and I leave OmniFocus Mac running in the background for 8+ hours most days. I sync via WebDAV (box.net).

Sync on the iPhone often fails because it goes to auto-lock while sync'ing and when I unlock it the connection has failed.

I've tried the sync-all-devices-in-consecutive-hours thing, and it did't help.

I've repeatedly tried to reset the database on the iPhone and it crashes (boots me to the home screen).

I just tried Brian's "force a compaction" strategy, and it didn't appear to do anything. I'll try it again.

Thanks Brian, I've successfully got it down to 1 zip file. I forced a compaction, as per your strategy above, but I also had to reinstall OmniFocus on the iPhone, and start a "New Database" on first run, in order to get the "Local copy"/"Server copy" dialog. Well, I chose server copy, got my shared settings, and sync'ed. (I should note that it booted me to the home screen once it had done sync'ing.) Startup time is now much faster: 1-2 seconds.

- I just tried creating one test action on iPhone and sync'ed: 4.5 minutes.

- Again, tried creating a sample action and sync'ed: 2.25 minutes.

- Just pressed sync again without creating or modifying anything: 1.25 minutes.

I'm now up to 5 zip files. We'll see if it goes down again once I sync the Mac version some more times.

[QUOTE=nonplusplus;66357]- I just tried creating one test action on iPhone and sync'ed: 4.5 minutes.

- Again, tried creating a sample action and sync'ed: 2.25 minutes.

- Just pressed sync again without creating or modifying anything: 1.25 minutes.

I'm now up to 5 zip files. We'll see if it goes down again once I sync the Mac version some more times.[/QUOTE]

Hmm, I usually have 50 - 150 zip files and syncing my phone through the cloud usually takes 5 - 10 seconds—nowhere near the 1.25 - 2.25 minutes you're seeing. I wonder where the bottleneck is for you? Are you syncing over a local Bonjour connection, or to the cloud using Edge, 3G, or Wi-Fi? (If you're syncing to the cloud, are you using MobileMe or some other WebDAV service?)

I'm syncing via webDAV (box.net).

Thanks for such a quick reply.

What is your network connection though? GPRS, Edge, 3G or Wi-Fi? Any of the first two are going to be slow(er) - GPRS in particular, 3G varies depending on the load from other users on the network at the time but should be reasonably fast and Wi-Fi should be fastest.

It's a wifi network, and my signal strength is fine, seeing as in the above tests I was about ten feet away from the router.

You might compare the speed of syncing using Bonjour. If it's significantly faster (which I would expect!), then the bottleneck is either your Internet connection (unlikely) or your WebDAV service provider (Box.net, in this case).

I also have like 167 zip files on my WebDAV server (as reported from iPhone). Syncing is fast on the mac but slow on the iPhone. I checked that I have only these two in my preferences and also that they have been synced recently.

However I see some strange behaviour in the Apache Logs auf the WebDAV server:

This is the Mac syncing - everything fine. It gets a 401 first to authenticate and afterwards seems to be doing the sync normally (note there are more similar entries in the log).

[CODE]128.141.131.166 - - [14/Sep/2009:16:45:30 +0200] "PROPFIND /dav/dka/omnifocus/OmniFocus.ofocus HTTP/1.1" 401 465
128.141.131.166 - dka [14/Sep/2009:16:45:30 +0200] "PROPFIND /dav/dka/omnifocus/OmniFocus.ofocus HTTP/1.1" 301 329
128.141.131.166 - dka [14/Sep/2009:16:45:30 +0200] "PROPFIND /dav/dka/omnifocus/OmniFocus.ofocus/ HTTP/1.1" 207 467
128.141.131.166 - dka [14/Sep/2009:16:45:30 +0200] "PROPFIND /dav/dka/omnifocus/OmniFocus.ofocus HTTP/1.1" 301 329
128.141.131.166 - dka [14/Sep/2009:16:45:31 +0200] "PROPFIND /dav/dka/omnifocus/OmniFocus.ofocus/ HTTP/1.1" 207 49970
128.141.131.166 - dka [14/Sep/2009:16:45:31 +0200] "PUT /dav/dka/omnifocus/OmniFocus.ofocus/20090914144747%3Dno9MYrve6L4%2BgHYX51p1ipQ.zip-write-in-progr
128.141.131.166 - dka [14/Sep/2009:16:45:31 +0200] "MOVE /dav/dka/omnifocus/OmniFocus.ofocus/20090914144747%3Dno9MYrve6L4%2BgHYX51p1ipQ.zip-write-in-prog
128.141.131.166 - dka [14/Sep/2009:16:45:31 +0200] "PUT /dav/dka/omnifocus/OmniFocus.ofocus/20090914144819%3DgHYX51p1ipQ%2BnfYw1Wg8pOe.zip-write-in-progr
128.141.131.166 - dka [14/Sep/2009:16:45:32 +0200] "MOVE /dav/dka/omnifocus/OmniFocus.ofocus/20090914144819%3DgHYX51p1ipQ%2BnfYw1Wg8pOe.zip-write-in-prog
128.141.131.166 - dka [14/Sep/2009:16:45:32 +0200] "PUT /dav/dka/omnifocus/OmniFocus.ofocus/20090914144841%3DnfYw1Wg8pOe%2BnqdBBs7ohf5.zip-write-in-progr
128.141.131.166 - dka [14/Sep/2009:16:45:32 +0200] "MOVE /dav/dka/omnifocus/OmniFocus.ofocus/20090914144841%3DnfYw1Wg8pOe%2BnqdBBs7ohf5.zip-write-in-prog
128.141.131.166 - dka [14/Sep/2009:16:45:32 +0200] "PUT /dav/dka/omnifocus/OmniFocus.ofocus/20090914144850%3DnDYGc4IBUO8.client-write-in-progress-nuUDAF0
128.141.131.166 - dka [14/Sep/2009:16:45:32 +0200] "MOVE /dav/dka/omnifocus/OmniFocus.ofocus/20090914144850%3DnDYGc4IBUO8.client-write-in-progress-nuUDAF
128.141.131.166 - dka [14/Sep/2009:16:45:32 +0200] "DELETE /dav/dka/omnifocus/OmniFocus.ofocus/20090914124616=nDYGc4IBUO8.client HTTP/1.1" 204 -
[/CODE]

However if the iPhone is syncing, it looks like the following. There's a 401 for each request and only then the iPhone is authenticating (dka is my username here, 3rd column). Something seems to be strange with the session handling and/or authentication here (although here: there are more similar entries in the log):

[CODE]
128.141.72.107 - - [14/Sep/2009:16:52:21 +0200] "PROPFIND /dav/dka/omnifocus/OmniFocus.ofocus HTTP/1.1" 401 465
128.141.72.107 - dka [14/Sep/2009:16:52:21 +0200] "PROPFIND /dav/dka/omnifocus/OmniFocus.ofocus HTTP/1.1" 301 329
128.141.72.107 - - [14/Sep/2009:16:52:21 +0200] "PROPFIND /dav/dka/omnifocus/OmniFocus.ofocus/ HTTP/1.1" 401 465
128.141.72.107 - dka [14/Sep/2009:16:52:21 +0200] "PROPFIND /dav/dka/omnifocus/OmniFocus.ofocus/ HTTP/1.1" 207 467
128.141.72.107 - - [14/Sep/2009:16:52:22 +0200] "PROPFIND /dav/dka/omnifocus/OmniFocus.ofocus HTTP/1.1" 401 465
128.141.72.107 - dka [14/Sep/2009:16:52:22 +0200] "PROPFIND /dav/dka/omnifocus/OmniFocus.ofocus HTTP/1.1" 301 329
128.141.72.107 - - [14/Sep/2009:16:52:22 +0200] "PROPFIND /dav/dka/omnifocus/OmniFocus.ofocus/ HTTP/1.1" 401 465
128.141.72.107 - dka [14/Sep/2009:16:52:22 +0200] "PROPFIND /dav/dka/omnifocus/OmniFocus.ofocus/ HTTP/1.1" 207 52294
128.141.72.107 - - [14/Sep/2009:16:52:23 +0200] "GET /dav/dka/omnifocus/OmniFocus.ofocus/20090914144017=hkc9yI5EEWs+gxj7p61CU06.zip HTTP/1.1" 401 465
128.141.72.107 - dka [14/Sep/2009:16:52:23 +0200] "GET /dav/dka/omnifocus/OmniFocus.ofocus/20090914144017=hkc9yI5EEWs+gxj7p61CU06.zip HTTP/1.1" 200 2737
128.141.72.107 - - [14/Sep/2009:16:52:24 +0200] "GET /dav/dka/omnifocus/OmniFocus.ofocus/20090914144016=hy0P2YIrUdp+hkc9yI5EEWs.zip HTTP/1.1" 401 465
128.141.72.107 - dka [14/Sep/2009:16:52:24 +0200] "GET /dav/dka/omnifocus/OmniFocus.ofocus/20090914144016=hy0P2YIrUdp+hkc9yI5EEWs.zip HTTP/1.1" 200 3835
128.141.72.107 - - [14/Sep/2009:16:52:24 +0200] "GET /dav/dka/omnifocus/OmniFocus.ofocus/20090914144857=nqdBBs7ohf5+jGWXisb_CdN.zip HTTP/1.1" 401 465
128.141.72.107 - dka [14/Sep/2009:16:52:24 +0200] "GET /dav/dka/omnifocus/OmniFocus.ofocus/20090914144857=nqdBBs7ohf5+jGWXisb_CdN.zip HTTP/1.1" 200 650
128.141.72.107 - - [14/Sep/2009:16:52:24 +0200] "GET /dav/dka/omnifocus/OmniFocus.ofocus/20090914144910=d3zfkShq_cJ+cVcdehSRygQ.zip HTTP/1.1" 401 465
128.141.72.107 - dka [14/Sep/2009:16:52:24 +0200] "GET /dav/dka/omnifocus/OmniFocus.ofocus/20090914144910=d3zfkShq_cJ+cVcdehSRygQ.zip HTTP/1.1" 200 810
128.141.72.107 - - [14/Sep/2009:16:52:25 +0200] "GET /dav/dka/omnifocus/OmniFocus.ofocus/20090914144111=huHnlhvFoRj+no9MYrve6L4.zip HTTP/1.1" 401 465
128.141.72.107 - dka [14/Sep/2009:16:52:25 +0200] "GET /dav/dka/omnifocus/OmniFocus.ofocus/20090914144111=huHnlhvFoRj+no9MYrve6L4.zip HTTP/1.1" 200 2736
128.141.72.107 - - [14/Sep/2009:16:52:25 +0200] "GET /dav/dka/omnifocus/OmniFocus.ofocus/20090914144904=jGWXisb_CdN+d3zfkShq_cJ.zip HTTP/1.1" 401 465[/CODE]

Maybe this is also part of the reason why the sync from the iPhone is so slow. I guess making almost double the requests necessary is a significant performance loss (at least on mobile networks). (NB This was WiFi)

Used versions: OmniFocus 1.7.3 on the Mac, 1.5.2 on the iPhone