[zimpenfish]

Would a database stored in an XML file shared between 60+ clients over NFS beat that for monstrositiness?

[overcast]

Well, this is used now by about 4000 clients. So you be the judge. There is so many indexes, and spaghetti, just to make sure every possible "relationship" is accounted for. Amazing it works at all.

Just using an XML file is pretty crazy though.

[cntlzw]

How concurrent is that? Can't imagine how writing to the file is even achieved.

[zimpenfish]

"Badly". At least once a week someone managed to overwrite a change another client had just made. When I left, they were running a cron to copy it every minute as a "quick restore" when it happened.

[shoo]

maybe there is an email thread shared between all clients for acquiring / releasing the write lock on the xml file

[K-Wall]

Semaphore as a service Slack Chat bot.

[noir_lord]

Seen that.

Shared drive with excel files, people would shout at each other to 'release the lock'

[zimpenfish]

Yeah, first real job had the customer database as a VB frontend onto an Access file shared over {whatever Win95 was using in 1996-97}. After a few snafus, the CS / Sales people learned that they had to single-task with the database.

[beachy]

That made me snort my coffee.

[jboy55]

Lol, if it sent emails, I might know of such a system

[toomuchtodo]

This is a special level of hell.