[GNC] Lightweight multi-user enhancement suggestion

[Kalpesh Patel]

It indeed is not.

The biggest challenge will come from keeping (for argument's sake) two independent computer's memory view of the same file consistent since all data is loaded into memory at the startup, regardless what the back-end persistent store is used. If (for argument's sake) two independent computer's memory view are not consistent then they will drift and then an arbiter will be needed to decide who wins, possibly at each individual transaction level.

-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Butler <stephen.m.butler51 at gmail.com> 
Sent: Friday, July 17, 2026 9:52 PM
To: stepbystepfarm at comcast.net
Cc: GnuCash Users <gnucash-user at gnucash.org>
Subject: Re: [GNC] Lightweight multi-user enhancement suggestion

As an Oracle DBA, the locking and queueing structures are very complex -- even to do this at the whole file level.  It is not a lightweight task.

On Fri, Jul 17, 2026, 15:57 Michael or Penny Novack via gnucash-user < gnucash-user at gnucash.org> wrote:

> On 7/17/2026 12:53 PM, David G. Pickett via gnucash-user wrote:
> >   I don’t think multi-user is trivial to implement. Especially with
> something like this, everyone is going to jump on it and think that it 
> has full fledge capabilities when it doesn't.
> >
> A modest suggestion?
>
> Don't even try doing this until AFTER you have studied how done by a 
> typical example.  Say SQL allowing multiple simultaneous users to 
> access
> (read) and change (write) to the database. << I'm somebody who in my 
> working days USED DB2, wrote batch programs reading and writing to the 
> database. Even wrote something to change the STRUCTURE of the database
> (add tables, modify tables, etc.).   BUT (big but) that doesn't mean I
> ever looked at how DB2 itself was coded, how IT prevented all the 
> sorts of things that could go wrong with multiple simultaneous users 
> >>
>
> The only simpler part of this (for gnucash) is only a single resource 
> being controlled, so SOME potential problems are impossible (example:
> two resources A and B; instance one has a lock on A while instance two 
> a lock on B)
>
> Been retired for a wile now, so can't remember how much "concurrent 
> processing' is taught at the undergraduate level in Computer Sciences.
>
> Michael D Novack
>
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