This simplest way, in my opinion, is this... Have the data for each record be stored in a text file that is placed in a folder that is only used for storing these records.
Have a rev app that allows the user to access the records as needed, but not all records at once. Whenever someone opens a record, have the app place the word "open " & the users ID & whatever character you use as your itemdelimiter [I prefer numtochar(28)] before all the text in the file. When someone else tries to access that record, the app will see that word 1 of item 1 of the file is the word "open", and that it is open for a different user ID - and will know that it can only be opened in a read-only mode. You can create an override handler as well, so that the new user can assume control of the open file, if necessary, in case the first user failed to close the record for some reason. When finished with a record, the first item should be changed to "not open", and then the record will be accessible to other users. Storing information in separate text files is tricky at first, but once you get used to it, it is very powerful. Doing it this way means your stack does not constantly get larger as the dataset grows. It also means you are not constantly saving and resaving your program, which increases the odds of your stack becoming corrupted. Another advantage to this approach is that you do not need to have your program installed on every user's machine. Just have it on the shared drive, and link to it from every user's desktop. Since it loads up into memory when it runs, and since you are not saving changes to the stack itself, it does not cause any problems to have multiple users running from the same executable file. (This is on Windows - don't know if this is also true for Mac or Linux) The advantage to having just one executable that everyone runs is that when you make a change to it, that change will show up for every user whenever they restart the program. Cheers, Jonathan -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of keith Sent: Thursday, June 30, 2005 3:44 AM To: Revolution List Subject: How do I make simple multiple user access app? I've been working things out as much as possible by using the documentation and searching my email archives, but I'd appreciate some live input on this if y'all don't mind! What's the very simplest way to build a basic card database stack which needs to be used by more than one person at once? This is a simple data capture tool which creates a new card for each chunk of data that's entered (details on a new product) and spits out a tab-delimited text file to be sent off to another organisation for their use. There's probably no need to alter existing data, but it would be necessary to let the user browse through previous entries. Easy enough: previous/next, popup menu listing the cards by product title, etc. We're talking just hundreds of items here, with simple sub-categories to keep browsing manageable if it grows much beyond that. But here's the twist... It is likely to be left open on someone's screen, but it is also likely to be needed by one or two other people at the same time. The information (the cards with their fields and other controls) needs to be collated/kept in one location (i.e. run from the local network file server?), not as separate collections of data on different 'single user' machines. To start with at least there's no chance of a true server database such as MySQL. So, how is multiple user access handled in a situation like this, where it is all down to Revolution? What's the simplest solution, both in terms of ease of creation and robustness, that you'd suggest? (This aspect could be done in FileMaker, but that app just makes me want to scream when it comes to development control. It is as inflexible and blinkered as Revolution is flexible and open-ended! :-) Thanks in advance, my fingers are crossed! k _______________________________________________ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution _______________________________________________ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution