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There are some columns that absolutely cannot have stale data
When multiple people are editing the same records, and when these edits are made somewhere close to each other in time, you can have the eventuality where one user's data is "stale" when compared to the others.
Here is an example:
- User A and B open the app around the same time
- Both apps get a snapshot of the data
- The timestamp of this sync is actually recorded by the app (note this for later)
- User A makes a modification to a record
- User B then makes a modification to the SAME record, but without hitting the sync button first
What happens in this situation? Which users' data is actually recorded in the system?
- User B
- User A's data is lost
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But remember how I said that the last sync time is actually recorded by the system? You can find it in the edit logs:
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I wish there was a way for me to toggle something on a column (perhaps a whole table) that would allow a far more robust timestamp checking system to be enabled; one that ensures that any edits made have a sync time AFTER the last reported edit to a column/table, rejecting anything that's old.
For certain tables, I ABSOLUTELY want to reject any edits made with a last sync that's outdated from the last update that has been made; in these situations the system would be designed this way - users would be prepared for this - and the whole purpose would be to maintain data integrity, at the expense of user experience.
But this would allow us, as the users, to have confidence that the data we're looking at is ALWAYS updated. (And maybe when an edit is rejected, there might be a setting that we could turn on that would allow admins or someone to receive a notification of the failed edit. This would need to be optional, as it could potentially really overwhelm something if tons of edits are rejected.)
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Cheers; and as always, thanks for considering!