Hi There,
It's been an age since I've been on the MC Forums: many of the old faces have seemingly been replaced by newer ones!
In my house we have two computers that, presently, have two separate MC libraries, although the files all exist on one computer -- the second accesses them over a network share. I am clear on the concepts of a single, networked, library but it's the "first MC instance gets 'write', others get 'read-only'" concept that doesn't work for me.
Between the two computers we have approximately 12,000 tracks and some of them require quite a bit of maintenance thanks to a good few years of neglect. Using the network model that I've read about in threads such as this:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=42422.0 only one client can update the library during a session.
Building on the current file-based database, a lock file seems the easiest suggestion.
There have also been other suggestions about keeping the file data separate from the user data which would make a lot of sense in an environment such as this. If both library and user profiles are stored on a networked machine it means that each user can have a unique experience which could (given a login scenario) follow the user around if they worked on different machines.
Are there any sensible ways to manage this in the mean time? For example: is there any way to take a subset of the library files (everything except the user info fields, such as "field (number plays).jmd", "field (rating).jmd" or "playlistx.jmd") and merge them, in a CVS-kind-of-way?
At any rate, these are not original suggestions: my cursory reading indicates that there are a number of other people thinking the same things, but perhaps this post serves to consolidate these thoughts?
Sincerely,
Philip