We need to prevent multi-user access to the SQL backend (Re: New GnuCash article on LWN)

[Graham Leggett]

On 20 May 2010, at 6:55 PM, Derek Atkins wrote:

> Well, over time one would hope that we can slowly rearchitect  
> gnucash to
> be more aware of multi-user situations.

I'm keen to do some of that work, as I need it directly.

>> In any practical usage, even in it's simplest form, you start off
>> small and simple, and then eventually you reach a point where you  
>> want
>> to share the file between two people, or share the file with an
>> accountant, and you can't.
>
> Why not?

Because a situation arises when both of you need to make writes. Which  
copy is the authoritative copy? Using svn alleviates this somewhat,  
but isn't ideal.

It is really easy to silently lose transactions, if a mixup occurs  
over who holds the master copy of the data file.

>> The fact that gnucash can be asked to save the file in text/xml  
>> helps,
>> because you can version this in something like svn. But versioning a
>> database isn't easy at all.
>
> Why do you need versioning?  Versioning is overkill for data sharing.

It prevents the situation where I add a transaction, then you add a  
transaction, silently overwriting mine.

Not only is the data wrong, it is silently wrong without warning.

> On the other hand, once you start going down that road you really  
> start
> getting well past what GnuCash was designed for: Home Users and Small
> Businesses.  It's a Quicken/Quickbooks replacement, not a Peachtree or
> SAP replacement.

I am a small business, there are two partners and an accountant. We  
are nowhere even close to needing SAP.

Regards,
Graham
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