TntMPD
Powerful software for ministry partner development...

Comments: Can two or more users share a database file over a local area network?

Table of Contents

Page Details

Published by:
Troy Wolbrink
on 21 Oct 2008
3 people found this article useful.

Can two or more users share a database file over a local area network?

Sort by: Published Date | Most Recent | Most Useful
By: Charlie Posted on 20 Jan 2009 2:04 PM

Does sharing the database lend itself to combining individual support groups into one database for use by 8 or 10 folks?

By: Troy Wolbrink Posted on 18 Feb 2009 5:54 PM

I'm not sure I follow.  Do you want to combine 10 databases into one big database?  What's your goal?

By: Russ Posted on 29 Jun 2009 6:42 PM

I have two computers on a network using a shared database of TntMPD.

I experimented by making a change to a contact on computer A and then checking to see if the change was visible on computer B.  I didn't wait long, but it seemed the change on computer B wasn't visible until I re-opened the instance on computer B.

After what time period should I see changes from A reflected on B or is re-opening the database required?

By: Troy Wolbrink Posted on 29 Jun 2009 7:51 PM

You can click on: View | Refresh to get the latest data.  Most of the time, when you navigate to a contact it's fresh data.  So if you waiting for the data to change automatically for the contact you're on, it would never happen.  But perhaps by moving to a different contact, then moving back, it would be fresh data.  Let me know if this does the trick!

By: Russ Posted on 2 Jul 2009 5:04 PM

Hi Troy,

Here's the result of my experiment that seems to consistently yield what I described above.

- Using a Shared Database

- Open TntMPD on computer A

- Open TntMPD on computer B

- Make a change to contact X on computer B

- Navigate away to a different contact on computer B

- Navigate back to contact X on computer B and confirm change was made

- Navigate to contact X on computer A

- choose view -> refresh for contact X on computer A

- **change is NOT visible** for contact X on computer A

- close TntMPD on computer B

- choose view-> refresh for contact X on computer A

- **change is NOT visible** for contact X on computer A

- close TntMPD on computer A

- open TntMPD on computer A

- **change IS visible** on computer A

So, if two computers are using a shared TntMPD database simultaneously, it appears that closing the program is necessary to get the latest information of writes made by any other computers sharing the same instance.

By: Troy Wolbrink Posted on 3 Jul 2009 12:30 PM

I just tried the same experiment with a database shared between my computer and my wife's computer.  When I made a change to a contact on my wife's computer, I was able to see the change on my computer after about 3 seconds.  So it wasn't instantly visible to my computer, but I didn't have to close and reopen on my computer either.  Maybe you were to fast in your experiment?  The Jet database engine used by TntMPD has a lazy write and a cached read feature for performance.  Perhaps your test outperformed the built-in delays.

By: Paul Bowers Posted on 14 Oct 2009 11:45 AM

I tried putting the database on our server, but now I get that the file is read only.  I can only open it on the server & not get that error.  Opinions?