[Samba] Re: SAMBA & ISAM Databases

[David Collier-Brown]

> On Tue, 2004-09-14 at 18:23, Pepe Guimarães wrote:
>> I have a heterogeneous network with a R.H. Linux server running Samba
>>3.0.5 and various
>>Win clients (from Win 98 to Win XP Pro). On a Samba share I have an ISAM
>>database (Access, FoxPro etc. like)
>>that is being accessed by applications running on the Win clients and by
>>applications running in Linux.

   Alas, this is generally a bad idea.  One shouldn't share the
filesystems underneath databases and try to make the filesystem
locking do the work that a database normally does.

   Instead, run the database with its disks directly connected,
and mounted (usually) raw, so as to be under the database's control.
This allows the client to send just the query to the machine with
the DBMS, and get back just the results. let the DBMS worry about
locking, query optimization and caching/flushing.  It's going
to be far better at it than a filesystem.

   Access is what IBM used to call an "access method" (:-)), a way
of talking to a back end. As a database it's rather unimpressive,
and it only scales to a small integer number of users if it's
running on an SMB share. It can run on file systems in order
to be attractive for small tasks, and to encourage you to later
buy a back-end database machine.  Consider it "a free sample of
crack cocaine".

--dave
David Collier-Brown,  | Always do right. This will gratify
davecb at spamcop.net    | some people and astonish the rest
                       |                      -- Mark Twain