Allow song database to be shared on a remote server

[Jak0bd]

I can imagine this has been asked before - but in our church we actually make use of Quelea on 4 different laptops (for logistical reasons), this means syncing the database is a manual task using Google Drive and having FreeFileSync in place to quickly be able to sync the data. But this is error prone and cumbersome.

Would it be possible to support a remote database (on FTP, some basic server software, what so ever) to support this? Would like to hear the options regarding this.

PS. Awesome product, thanks for this!

[ArvidNy]

Hi Jak0bd,

It has been suggested before and we have plans to take a look at it at some point. However, time is usually the main issue here. I know other users also have found ways to sync the database folder using Dropbox and similar services, but as you say those solutions tend to be error prone. Other than that, I'm afraid there's no official way to synchronize a database at the moment. We will see what we can do though!

Thanks for the suggestion and the feedback!

[JessyJP]

Well softlinks can help with that. Also, you can sync just the database and nothing else. I actually use it to sync with 3 computers using MEGA and there are no problems.
MEGA has annoying popups that will let you kno if somone is doing something on the sync folder and this what you know not to add anything to the database at this moment but you can just read form if. With Dropbox I would often get conflicts with database files but not with mega.

Something that simple that can be done is for the database in ram to hold a timestamp of loading and when it wants to update, it can check the the time stamp on the database file in storage(SSD or softlink or remote file).
This way before writing it first updates itself, then appies changes or addtions or deletions and the writes to file.
In this case unless users have made edits to the same song within less than 10 seconds of each other you couldn't have any oveerwires ever occuring.
No need for any special implementation or synchronization solutions or file write locks (which is also an option but unnecessary).
I personally sync everything Reaper projects and quelea profile and more. Softlinks are your friend.

[quelea-bot]

This issue has been mentioned on Quelea community. There might be relevant details there:

https://quelea.discourse.group/t/schedule-updating-library/771/4