GNUCash - Multi-user

Derek Atkins warlord at MIT.EDU
Mon Feb 7 16:17:26 EST 2005


Jean-David Beyer <jdbeyer at exit109.com> writes:

> Derek Atkins wrote:
>> Hi,
>> Right now there's not a good multi-user gnucash solution.  You can
>> have multiple users serially use gnucash, but not simultaneously.
>> We're working to recitify that situation, but that wont be solved
>> until at LEAST the next major release.
>>
> Do I misunderstand the term multi-user?

Perhaps..

> I run Linux and have (at least) two users (each with his own login) that 
> use GnuCash. Each has his own accounts and his own files (in particular, 
> $HOME/GnuCash/*). I have never had it happen that both users were using 
> the gnucash program at the same time, but it seems to me that it would 
> work unless the gnucash implimentation is rather different from what I 
> would imagine it to be. I would call what I was doing multi-user, and it 
> seems inherent in Linux (or UNIX) that GnuCash would be multi-user in my 
> sense of the term just because the OS is multi-user.

Yes, that is certainly one interpretation of the term, and in this
interpretation yes, multiple people can execute separate instances
of the gnucash application using separate data files.  The current
implementation does that just fine.

> Could it be that the term multi-user is referring to multiple users trying 
> to use the same database (files in somewhere/GnuCash/*)? I can see why 
> that would not be implimented yet, but it is not clear that many would 
> wish to use it that way.

Yes, this is what I believe the original user was asking about, and
yes, this is ALSO a reasonable interpretation of the phrase
"multi-user".  Indeed, within the gnucash context this is MORE LIKELY
to be the appropriate interpretation of the phrase (as opposed to your
interpretation of the phrase).

As for why people would wish to use it this way, go back to the
original request...  In a business context you may have multiple
people who are trying to enter financial data into the financial
database.

-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available


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