Syncing with web database

[mikemessiah]

Hi there.

We are currently designing an application that is going to run on local client machines and synchronise data with a web based database. I was planning on using datasets as you would with any local based application. Will we have any performance problems in regards to this or is there a better way to design this ? initial data upload should be 4000 + rows in a table with a 160 fields for the clients. Once there initial data is up it will only be changing a couple of records a day for them. There is probably going to be a 100+ sites using the app with this data volume. Any ideas or words of wisdom ?

 

[cjard]

Hi there.

We are currently designing an application that is going to run on local client machines and synchronise data with a web based database. I was planning on using datasets as you would with any local based application. Will we have any performance problems in regards to this or is there a better way to design this ? initial data upload should be 4000 + rows in a table with a 160 fields for the clients. Once there initial data is up it will only be changing a couple of records a day for them. There is probably going to be a 100+ sites using the app with this data volume. Any ideas or words of wisdom ?

"web based database" -> doesnt make sense I'm afraid. The web uses HTTP to transmit text based data. Databases rarely if ever use HTTP as a protocol for client conenction

Did you mean "internet" when you said "web" ?

 

[mikemessiah]

Hi there yes, sorry for the incorrect wording there. The database is just hosted on a dedicated server.

 

[jmcilhinney]

Presumably you are going to have your clients connect to a web service and have that connect to the database like any other application. We've done something similar here not that long ago with about 120 WinForms clients and, while it obviously wasn't real time, we had no specific performance issues on what was a fairly poorly specced server. Just be very aware of the possibility for concurrency issues, which are almost always a consideration when using ADO.NET. Will it be possible for two clients to retrieve the same data and then both try to update it? If so then you probably want to make sure that the second to save doesn't blow away the changes made by the first to save.