Using an externally hosted postGreSQL as a gnu cash backend?

[Colin Law]

On 12 April 2016 at 05:38, Plutocrat <plutocrat at gmail.com> wrote:
> Michael Wagner wrote on Tuesday, 12 April, 2016 06:39 AM:
>> So gnucash doesn't update the PostGres DB using transaction semantics?
>> That's interesting - not doubting you, that just seems odd.
>
> I think the point he was making was that whatever db backend you use -- XML, sqlite, MySQL, Postgresql -- the way Gnucash works is to read the whole data from the database when it starts up, and only writes it back when you hit save. So as data is not being constantly written to Postgresql, it's not really any more reliable than XML.

I don't believe that is correct.  It does read it all at the start,
but when using a db backend modifications are written as they are
made, so there is no need to save at the end.  However, since it does
not monitor the db for changes if another user connects and makes
changes these will not be seen by the original user, with potentially
disastrous consequences.  Worse in fact than with the xml backend
where, if two users ignore the lock and both make changes at the same
time, all that happens is that one users changes are lost when the
file is saved by the other user.  With a db backend if this happens I
believe the db could be trashed.

Colin