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

So, in our office, we have a shared tntMPD database for managing our city donors and church partnerships.

If we have a few folks who want to switch to a mac, and they can access our local area network, will they be able to access the tntMPD database with the ability to now use tntMPD on a mac? They are looking at new Mac Pro Book 15" i5 processor.

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?

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.

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.

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!

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?

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

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