Re: Something like offline-sync or two-way replication?

Hi,



> So in essence, I'm looking for a way they can fill out a form, then
> return to the office and upload their changes to a database. I don't
> believe they necessarily need to access any data from the database
> outside of the office, just to make changes to it when they return.
> There are likely to be only around four people using this so
> efficiency
> is not a high priority. Any suggestions on the best or perhaps
> easiest
> way to do this?
>=20

If you don't need on the spot read/write access to your remote db, then you=
 could always check out the XForm capability that openoffice.org has alread=
y built-in. With this, you could design a form, and use that form to bind t=
o a data instance that would be saved locally as a separate xml file, e.g. =
on pressing a save button in your form. Once back in the office, you could =
have a server process that would accept the uploaded xml files and process =
them to extract/verify/validate/insert the data into the database. Of cours=
e, if your users have sporadic external access to the network and your remo=
te db, then this step could also be managed.

The advantage of this is that you wouldn't have to worry about trying to si=
multaneously share a single ODB file, which as far as I know doesn't work (=
reliably and without data loss), or having multiple ODB files floating arou=
nd being modified by each user according to their own particular desires (q=
ueries, new forms, new tables, etc - an admin nightmare). I do seem to reca=
ll however that XForms had a feature lack which prevented the creator/admin=
 from completely switching off the form designer toolbar, which meant that =
the user could still tinker with the form and potentially wreak havoc. I do=
n't know whether  that particular inconvenience has since been addressed (o=
r even if it was raised as a feature request). This solution does however r=
equire knowledge of XPath, bindings and XML in general, but there is some u=
seful documentation out there. I am currently evaluating this solution with=
 a PHP/MySQL backend to see whether or not it would meet my needs for a par=
ticular aspect of my work.


Alex