I vote for Mike and Jan's answers. What you are describing will result in a
"race condition" where the last person to write to the file wins. Example:
Person A alters task 3 by deleting it. Person B extends the duration of task
3 by 14 days. If B is the last to write, task 3 remains at 14 days.
The airline industry runs into this all the time with seat reservations.
Two reservations agents want to sell seats on the same flight. If there is
only one seat left on the airplane what happens is the second agent is told
the flight is sold out. It is actually more complex than that, but you get
the idea.
How do you get around it? Complex database program such as SQL or Oracle.
The business rules that would be put in place are quite complex. In the
example above, who is to say which person (A or B) is correct?
MS Project, in any version (including Server), only allows one copy open as
Read/Write. Everyone else, without exception gets a read only copy. A work
around it to break the file into multiple smaller files and assign
responsibility on a file by file basis. We had a program manager do that
recently and we ended up with 98 files (that was too many, he only needed
about 8). Those smaller files were grouped into Master files which, in turn,
were grouped into a single higher level master file. Again, only one file
could be updated at a time... if the highest master was open, everyone else
is locked to read only.
If you want more information, consider that an .mpp file is actually a
database. Now, research the world of databases for updating and simultaneous
access. Perhaps one of the better books on the subject was written by
Colonel, try Googling him and "Database"
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If this post was helpful, please consider rating it.
Jim
Check out my new blog for more information:
http://www.msprojectblog.com