In our experience Microsoft has really screwed up the filesharing since
Vista for the type of real-time locking behavior EDB/DBISAM requires.
Proliferation of cheap NAS boxes has not helped. Same for over
aggressive anti-virus tools that seem to hold file locks longer than
ever before.

We found an older setup with Windows Server 2003 and XP clients only
works fairly (make sure AV excludes the EDB files from scans) -
Vista/Win7 (likely Win8 also) has problems especially when using Server
2008 or newer or NAS box.

Going C/S is the only way IMHO if you get fair number of data issues.

Raul


On 6/24/2013 8:30 AM, Volker Nabholz wrote:
> Okay lets see .. you say its all about filesharing.
> Using ElevateDB with Filesharing is a bad idea .. and customers having
> issues should use the ElevateDB-Server to reduce issues.
>
> please dont understand my comparison with sqlanywhere as grumble ... in our decision process we dicided us to use elevatedb.
> i just wanted to clearify if there are any options to improve elevatedb to get more solid.
>
> thx for that.
>

Volker,

I'd not say that ElevateDB is rock solid, because DBISAM was already rock solid, EDB is perhaps.. Titanium solid if that makes sense.

On the other hand, what has not improved at all are the windows file-sharing protocols, causing more and more trouble, mainly if you have to mix different windows versions, samba servers that are not windows and possibly also different versions, and adding to all that the already infamous hardware and network issues.

All in all - and this is only a personal opinion, - file-sharing is nowadays only reliable for local access (same machine) or a very small number of users (2,3) and I only use it if all the 2 or 3 computers have the same windows version and a reliable network.

Client/Server is not that hard to set up, in fact with EDB its very easy, I can't see any reason not to use it if you have a multi-user application. Also, you would be able to use a few features that are only available in C/S, (like JOBS for example, as well as some other things).

That said, if you still want/have to use file-sharing, the only thing that I can think of (just in case you didn't yet do it) is to set "Force Buffer Flushes To Disk" to ON in EDBManager, and in your applications to set the TEDBSession.ForceBufferFlush to TRUE in all your sessions.

--
Fernando Dias
[Team Elevate]

Volker,

<< Okay lets see .. you say its all about filesharing. Using ElevateDB with
Filesharing is a bad idea .. and customers having issues should use the
ElevateDB-Server to reduce issues. >>

Correct.  The problem with file-sharing is what Raul and Fernando point
out - it's out of our hands as to how reliable the protocol is.  With C/S
access, ElevateDB controls everything and can make itself tolerant of
network issues, as well as having the ElevateDB Server control all disk I/O.

<< please dont understand my comparison with sqlanywhere as grumble ... in
our decision process we dicided us to use elevatedb. i just wanted to
clearify if there are any options to improve elevatedb to get more solid. >>

I don't have problem with complaints, just please make sure that you're
comparing similar products and environments or else you'll get/give the
wrong impression about how reliable each product is.

Tim Young
Elevate Software
www.elevatesoft.com