My application is calculation intensive and the servers are agonizingly slow.
Administrators of my application only update the backends once a month (twice
a month max). So, my launching program allows the back-end file to be
downloaded to the user's PC. This will provide maximum speed for these
calculations/manipulations of data. Without this, just logging into the main
app connected to the server back-end file can take five minutes (normal time
is 15 seconds when linked to back-end file on PC) at some locations. They've
all been told many times that there is a possibility that the local PC data
may not be in sync with the server, but in 6 months that has never been a
problem.
This method works well and my users really appreciate the speed of data
retrieval from the local PC back-end versus the server back-end. However,
updating the server backend is still an issue. Updating can take a long,
long time in some cases and I've been struggling with how to deal with this.
At first I thought:
1) Do a forced logoff of any user connected to the server back-end (app
already has functionality for this). This will also lock everyone out until
the administrator sets that it is okay to connect to the server back-end
again.
2) Make a back-up copy of the server back-end file
3) Have the data entry person download the most current back-end file from
the server to their PC. This is so they have the most current version.
4) Data entry person updates the back-end file on their local PC.
5) Goto Windows explorer and copy the updated local PC back-end over the
server back-end.
But perhaps instead I should just include code in the application that allows
users to overwrite the server backend TABLE which has been updated with a
local PC backend TABLE (let's not talk about the situation where multiple
tables may have been updated yet), rather than copy over the whole file.
This could be a kind of synchronization process.
My users will not use the app if they are forced to always connect to the
server because it is so slow. The solution I have for downloading the
backend files periodically has been working real well. But I am struggling
with how to update the server backend files given the slow server connection.
I would greatly appreciate any comments on the scenarios I presented for
solving this or certainly if you have any other suggestions.
Thanks.
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