A little database project for the condo association…
There are five people on the board who will be the only users. The data not be updated very often (once a month?). What I’m thinking of doing is have one user be the administrator, who can make database changes. When the changes are done, the program would copy the database file (sqlite) to some cloud storage.
When other people use the program, the program would check the date of the copy in the cloud and download it if necessary.
Questions:
Has anyone done this sort of thing?
Any suggestions on a cloud storage provider (free would be nice, there won’t be much data).
been there, did that, wrote a number of apps that do this or something similar. there was a time when no one knew what “mobile first” was, so, we, and probably a billion other firms, invented it, doing exactly this.
you can export the sqlite file, or you can export data to csv’s, and store that in the cloud. that would make it easier to use for other tasks, such as excel. that would also make it harder to break the export. database files, including sqlite files, can be fragile when they are being moved into and out of the cloud. the csv files may be smaller, depending on the indexes in your db. i suppose you could also export and import dictionary files, if you wanted to, but, like a db file, they aren’t as flexible as csv.
you could use a number of free tools. dropbox is the original one, but box, mega, tera, etc. all have something. if your condo board has an online service it uses, such as google, microsoft, or zoho, they also have online storage. in each case, if you create an app or service account, you can control exactly where the data is stored (again, centrally), and do it without individual logins.
you should set a semaphore on the service when you are uploading new data, so the other clients are signaled that they have to wait to download it. in this case, it would be just be a file, with a name like “wait, dammit”. if it exists, wait, dammit. if it doesn’t, download away.