PDS & Concurrency

[Stephan Steiner]

Hi

Having burned my fingers before by a system half the company uses
concurrently, I'm wondering what will happen in the following scenarios:

Suppose I want to add a task to a project. Normally, I'd check out the
project, add the task, check in the project again, and finally run
ProjectData to get the ID of the newly created task.

If the project is already checked out by another party (somebody using
Project), then I can make the changes without checkout and checkin and it
wouldn't end well if I were to check in after not having checked out. But
suppose just before I send my ProjectTasksCreate, the project is checked in
again... and things go boom because you can't add tasks if the project isn't
checked out.

Is there any way to prevent such scenarios from happening?

Regards
Stephan

 

[Rod Gill]

No. Projects in Project Server, just like .mpp files are inherently
single-user when it comes to read/write access. All Project data is read
into memory and when saving all data is written back again. So, when someone
checks a project back in by saving and closing, any changes made by you will
either be over-written or potentially corrupt the project. You should test
the check out flag and cancel your operations until the project is checked
back in again.

 

[Stephan Steiner]

Hmm, but then what happens if the project manager is editing the project
while employees are reporting times at the same time (using webaccess)..
that can't be, can it?

Stephan

 

[Rod Gill]

Yes because the time sheet data is in a different set of tables and only
update the MSP_ tables after the times have been accepted by the PM.