| Al Bunch | email | Sep 18 2014, 01:04 PM |
| I'm considering buying a copy of LandlordMax and want to know if I store the database in a Dropbox folder, can I load the software on my home and my office computers and access the database from either one without having to move the database or go through a lot of hassle? | |
| Stephane Grenier | email | Sep 18 2014, 02:51 PM |
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Hi Al, Unfortunately it's not possible to directly access the database directly from dropbox from one computer to another without a good chance of corrupting the database. This is true of any software that is more than just a simple single file (ie a database backed software) because these systems are comprised of a number of files and dropbox has no transactional/atomic guarantee on the synchronization. These solutions are just not designed to handle concurrency issues that will happen and as a result your database will be corrupted as soon as you both try to save/edit the same data item (tenant, accounting entry, etc.). I wrote about this specific issue in our company email newsletter sometime last year, which you can find the online version of this specific issue at: http://archive.aweber.com/llmaxnewletter/FvJHw/h/LandlordMax_Newsletter_.htm You'll want to skip to the middle, near the section called Network Version Update. That being said if you're considering a webservice/website to manage your data, you may be interested in the following article our founder wrote on his blog at: http://www.followsteph.com/2012/04/19/what-are-the-risks-of-cloud-services/ which discusses the pros and cons of going with a webservice. Alternatively you can backup and restore the database from one computer to the other. Even better though is if you purchase the Soho Edition because then the different systems interact live with each other. In other words you remove the need to transfer your database from one computer to the other as they all just connect to a central computer (database). Regards, Stephan Grenier Founder LandlordMax Software Inc. http://www.LandlordMax.com http://www.FollowSteph.com |
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