Re: [sheflug] government open source policy

[David Willington <david.willington [at] xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Hmm. If you're planning on synching the servers both ways, I would
> predict that will be a recipe for data loss. Notwithstanding
> after-school study clubs/whatever, you can't sensibly synchronise two
> SQL servers both ways (e.g., auto-enumerated fields will get screwed,
> which will mean foreign keys will be jiggered), so one or other DB would
> have to get blatted.
> 
> Plus, when your internet line does go down for the week, suddenly you've
> got a week's worth of data on both servers. And when your sync fails,
> kids have done work at home that they can't access when they get to
> school. Etc. I think it sounds like a world of pain, personally :)
> 
> I would think that there are better solutions, but it depends on how
> intelligent your external server is. 
I've been away and thought about it and have seen (some of) the flaws in
my plan. At the moment I can't see a way round it (ie to use a server
located in the school if you're in the school and an external server if
you're outside school). 

Can you point me in the right direction for further inspiration? Having
thought about it, trying to get access into the school via the new line
(I hope) they can get might well be the simplest and best solution. When
it goes down at least they'll be able to work in school. The only
alternative I've come up with so far is to blat the databases at eg 8am
and 4pm and have everyone access either an external or an internal
server depending on the time of day, with a lot of legwork to get the
database in the right place if the connection goes down.

All the best

David

___________________________________________________________________

Sheffield Linux User's Group -
http://www.sheflug.co.uk/mailfaq.html

  GNU the choice of a complete generation.