does not archive if logged in to the website

Fixed!

If you're at all interested in this kind of the thing the problem stemmed from an optimistic locking failure. The iPhone API part of the application wasn't aware of changes made in the front end which led to an inconsistency in the data if you had first saved from the iPhone, then made a change, then tried to save something again. This is because the technology we use (WebObjects/EOF) makes heavy use of caching to save on expensive trips to the DB. The potential problem of this is that you can't be sure things didn't change since you last fetched the data. To protect against this it uses a system of locking, optimistic in this case (it is optimistic about it's chances of the data being the same). What this locking does is ensure that when it tries to make any changes to a database the data it has cached hasn't changed. If it has it stops because you could get into all kinds of a mess if it continued.

This is exactly what it was happening in this case. If you're really interested in this kind of the thing there's more here about how it all works http://developer.apple.com/documentat...