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Can a software database file be saved and kept in a shared folder like drop box and be accessed and used (whether simultaneously or not) from more than one computers? A quickbooks database file is an example. Can it be centrally located on a dropbox folder and be accessed by a computer from another location getting the benefits of synced and up to date info?

Romain
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Generally-speaking, no this will not work. Dropbox uses asynchronous replication. Unless the application is specifically designed with this use case in mind, your data will be hopelessly corrupted.

In the case of standard RDBMS engines, cooperation with the DB engine itself is required to implement reliable replication.

In short, very very rarely is replication as simple as copying files around (which is all Dropbox is doing).

EEAA
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    True, but you should include another sentence explaining why it will not work. – kasperd Mar 05 '16 at 14:59
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    Yes. Why would it not work? – Romain Mar 05 '16 at 15:04
  • @Romain In dropbox its a 1-1 relation, last writer win, as they are no lock mechanism like in SMB got, as each user would get their own copy of the file, and like I told, last writer win – yagmoth555 Mar 05 '16 at 18:48
  • It's also likely that users will overwrite each other's changes in a potentially horrible kind of way, especially with something like Quickbooks. – Katherine Villyard Mar 07 '16 at 18:47