Re: Any better ideas for file sharing?

Lewis,

Using OS/2 since 2.0, although I have, on the shelf, a 1.21 version of 
Acer branded Microsoft OS/2 whose 5-1/4" floppies have never been out of 
their sleeves.....

I used to run Moneydance at home on OS/2 without any hitches, however I 
only keep one OS/2 system active these days and it's a Warp 4.52 box 
that has been going unmolested, with the exception of adding Netdrive 
and the Samba plugin, for close to 10 years.

My current Moneydance box is my hex core 64 bit AMD + Suse 12.1 hotrod.

As I stated previously, using group permissions to grant read only 
access by other users to the MD file should be fairly straight forward, 
but I need my wife to have write privileges as well. As things stand, 
when either of us tries to open MD for read/write when its file is in 
use by the other, the server does lock that "new" user out of the file. 
MDs reaction to this is to give its "I can't find my file" message, 
which confuses her. Fortunately, I've convinced her to not start 
punching keys in frustration when something doesn't work as expected, 
which used to be her first reaction, and which sometimes had very 
adverse effects.

I've no experience working directly with an SQL, at least not since the 
days when I wrote in DBII, or even further back when I had to write my 
own B-tree program for credit in a compsci course when I was on a 4.77 
MHz PC and DOS 2.1, so I have to defer to those who have kept current 
with such things.

I *think* it would be cool if MD could be set up to have a front and 
back end where the front end was basically the program interface as we 
see it and the back end, which would be the actual data "shuffler", 
could be running as a server, either locally or on a remote box over the 
network.

On the other hand, I have absolutely NO interest in any software that 
requires, or allows, my data to live in the "CLOUD". I want my data to 
physically (now there's a contradiction in terms) reside on a local 
server that I control and is inside MY firewall!

Tom Garson

--------------------------------------------

On 03/26/2012 06:14 PM, Lewis G Rosenthal wrote:
> Hi, guys...
>
> PMFJI
>
> On 03/26/12 08:01 pm, Thomas Garson thus wrote :
>> On 03/26/2012 02:56 PM, Edward Reid wrote:
>>> Thomas Garson wrote:
>>>> ..........
>>>> Since Moneydance is not promoted as a multi-user product, we do not
>>>> attempt to access it at the same time, so I can't say how a usage
>>>> conflict would play out.
>>>
>>> I haven't actually tried it. However, MD is basically a
>>> document-oriented application. The "database" is a simple line-oriented
>>> data file which is loaded and saved. (Obviously a far more complex
>>> structure is built internally when the file is loaded, but that's not
>>> relevant for sharing concerns.) So my guess is that the result of a
>>> usage conflict would be the usual in such cases: whoever saves last
>>> overwrites changes the other has made.
>>
> This, of course, assumes that the file is not locked by the first system
> to access it. I've never tried accessing the same data file from two
> systems simultaneously (on any platform or filesystem).
>
> It would indeed be nice if MD could store its data in sqlite or MySQL
> (which would be a fairly simple upgrade from single user to multiuser).
> However, as a "personal" finance manager, I would suspect that this is a
> bit beyond the scope of Sean's original intentions (though food for
> thought for some enterprising extension developer). :-)
>
> While I can see Yaron's approach as a clever system of scrubbing the
> file, I like your idea better, Edward. If *I* were to do it, I'd create
> a sparse MD data file on the "other" machine, and then export the
> account data as necessary from the "live" system. If it truly does only
> need to be read only, updating would be a simple mater of wiping the
> data file and re-importing every so often (and assuming the systems were
> on the same LAN at regular (anticipated) times, this could be
> semi-authomated with cron (or, if on Windows, at).
>>
>> I suspect that you are correct, which is why I avoid using MD if there
>> is any chance my wife is doing her entries.
>>
>> It would be nice if the MD database were set up as a tree with record
>> locking of the leaves, but that would entail a major rewrite of its
>> database system and I'm OK with what it currently is for what I need
>> it for, and what it costs.
>>
>> For my business, I still use Peachtree Complete Accounting 12 for DOS,
>> as it uses a record locked C Tree, offers all of the features I need,
>> is very simple to use and is nearly bulletproof. It runs well on OS/2
>> Warp 4.52 or eCom Station, using Netdrive with the Samba Client Plugin
>> for server access.
>>
> Tom, it's *always* great to bump into another eCS user. :-)
>
> I'm presently running MD under OpenJDK6_b24 on eCS 1.2, and it works
> quite well. Our standard accounting app in the office (we are
> accountants, by the way) which we use for client write-up is a DOS app
> circa 1995 (Howell Client Accounting) which is a Btrieve app and runs
> beautifully under eCS, which is our standard desktop OS.
>
> I'd love to see (or even present) a Moneydance session at Warpstock one
> of these days. ;-)
>
> (Apologies to all for the bit of OT chat.)
>
> Cheers/2
>

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