Network Support for Lightroom
I have been hoping that Adobe would add support for Lightroom to be used over a network ever scence it was in the first beta. But now that they have released Beta 2 without network support, it seems that they are just choosing to ignore I big area of their users.
I have at least 4 computers running on a network that need to access all of my adjustments at any time. The current system of having to import the images into Lightroom on each computer almost unusable. I hate having to remember which computer I was editing the files I want on. This system may work fine if you are the photographer, editor, retoucher, and printer. But if you have different people to do some of those jobs, like most true photography studios, the current system needs reworking.
Network support was on the top of Scott Kelby’s Lightroom 2.0 wishlist, which adobe showed at photoshop world. So they know that we are screaming for this. Just look at this post on the beta 2 forums.
The problem with network support is the fact that they are using SQLLite for the database engine behind Lightroom. SQLLite does not support networks or even the abilty to store the database on a network share. This was just a very bad choice by Adobe. Why would you use something that would so greatly limit a product that was supposed to be the next leap in editing.
Even if they could keep SQLLite for most users and allow the power users to setup their own database server it would help things a lot. I understand the support problems with a client-server database, but there are many ways that they could make it easy to setup. For instance they could create their own database server and call it Lightroom server that way users would not have to deal with setting up their own server like mysql or mssql.
I posted about maybe installing our own server like mysql and dtull of adobe replied the following.
“Actually there are variations in SQL amongst the various databases, though Lightroom probably does do a lot of SQL that wouldn’t be portable to other databases. However, the performance characteristics of embedded databases versus those which operate via a network service are dramatically different and the DB/App coupling is actually quite different as well, so it’s not as easy as just pointing LR at a “real” RDBMS and having things “just work”. On top of that, the testing impact of supporting all the various DBs and configurations would be quite significant.”
I also asked if we can’t have true multiuser network support then why not allow us to store the Lightroom cataloge on a network share. dtull replyed.
“none of the databases I’ve used (and that’s quite a few) will operate reliably if their data files are on a network share (though many of them do run with their data on a storage area network, but that’s a whole different ballgame from your typical consumer file share) . The difference is that most DBs run on a big server machine and talk to their clients via a network protocol, so working with multiple clients is easy to handle. Those kinds of systems involve more setup and configuration, though, and are actually slower in the local access, single client scenario because the communication channel is lower bandwidth and higher latency than in process communication.
All that said, this is something we’ve talked about internally (that is, we’re not completely ignoring the request), but finding the right balance amongst the pros and cons of the different options is more than a little tricky.”
They have at least tested out the abilty to store over a network as he says the catalog becomes corrupted.
“I did actually add a switch (briefly) to allow support of a catalog file on a network share (basically just lifting the block on it) and managed to corrupt the catalog beyond repair (and if you Google around for my name, you’ll find I know a few things about repairing catalogs) when testing it under stress conditions. SQLite is fundamentally dependent on sound file locking guarantees to ensure data integrity and network file shares don’t cut it.
So, while it would be (was) be easy to “just allow it” for power users, I’d basically be committing myself to spending all my time helping people whose catalogs were damaged when their network hiccuped at the wrong moment.
Which unfortunately means a robust catalog on a network share feature is much harder and more risky than it seems on the surface without even getting into the multiple simultaneous users aspect.”
When asked about Mulituser/Network support in 2.0 dtull replied, “just that it isn’t there in 2.0 and isn’t as easy to do properly as some people indicate”
So it seems like Adobe has no intention of correcting their mistakes with a choice of database in Lightroom 2. Maybe we can hope that they will listen to thier customers when they start coding Lightroom 2.5 or 3.
If you want to voice your oppion on network support please reply to this thread on the Lightroom Beta 2 forums.