Guessing TapForms is not for me?

[Bob Kerr]

At the moment I have around six simple Bento databases which reside on an iMac. From time-to-time myself and my wife both access the databases from our individual Macs (not the host iMac) and read and edit records as required. Non of the databases are held on our individual Macs.

We also sync (or rather copy) the databases to our iPads so that we have access to reading the data when out and about. (I say copy because we only sync from the iMac to the iPads, not in the other direction, out of choice).

If we migrate to Tapforms can we have the functionality we have now with Bento?

Ideally we would love a cloud based solution (similar to the spreadsheets on Google Drive) but realise that Tapforms isn’t going to be able to do this for us.

Thanks for listening.

[Brendan]

Hi Bob,

Well Tap Forms uses iCloud to sync. So all devices syncing would have to have the same iCloud Apple ID signed in to share the database.

You can make a backup on one device and restore it on the other.

Thanks,

Brendan

[Bob Kerr]

Hmm as I thought then. We need to keep our separate iCloud IDs so, sadly, I need to look elsewhere. A great shame because I really like the look of Tap Forms and thought I had found my Bento replacement.

[Anonymous]

Well version 2.0 is going to even be better with the new layout engine!

Thanks,

Brendan

[Bob Kerr]

But will the same limitations apply?

“all devices syncing would have to have the same iCloud Apple ID signed in to share the database.”

[Brendan]

Hi Bob,

Yes, I haven’t done any work on the sync engine for 2.0.

Thanks,

Brendan

[ArsAstronautica]

Bob,

As a former Bento user, I can see that setup must have been some work to have set up and maintained. I presume you mounted the drive of the iMac host onto your individual Macs and worked on the DB from there. Downloading to the iPads is not hard, but uploading and merging any changes made on the iPad must have been fun.

I can think of several ways to get the same functionality out of TF, depending on how you use your DB and how much effort you want to put into it. One way is to simply create an iCloud account for the main DB. Login to that iCloud account to use the DB and all machines stay synced. You’d trade the pain of logging in/out for the pain of synching across multiple platforms.

Another possibility is to put the TF DB into either your or your wife’s iCloud account and then export the records to the other account. You’d be faced with a similar problem in re-merging her changes, but I presume you’ve worked that out with your Bento files.

If you want a truly automated solution, then you a probably looking at something much more expensive like FIleMaker.

Just some thoughts….

[Bob Kerr]

Thanks for this. With the Bento set-up for the desktops there’s no need to mount the host iMac drive. You just publish the databases (Bento calls them libraries) as shared on the local network. Then they magically appear on the Bento sidebar on the ‘client’ Macs’ and off you go. It’s also truly multi-user.

As for the iPads, we just load a copy of the data into them so that we can access (read) it when out of the office. I find it far too easy to accidentally change records by mistake on the touch screen so it’s one-way-sync only. It’s only for occasional use.

I’m weighing up the consequences of a third iCloud account just for Tap Forms. It has the added advantage off access to the data from anywhere with a network connection. However having to log in and out of the different iCloud accounts could prove to be a real pain. But I haven’t discounted it entirely.

I suppose I’m hoping that Google come along with a simple database that works on Google Drive. I shy away from Filemaker because I would be paying for a whole lot of functionality that we will never ever use. IMO there is one big gap in the market at the moment for a cloud based simple database solution that is multi-user.

[mrbill]

Hey Bob- I’m a former Bento and Filemaker user and landed on TF. Filemaker was WAY too much work.

This may be more of a question for Brendan- Is it possible for two users to have 1 TF DB file open and work on it at the same time? I was thinking it would be easy to locally share a folder on OS X, put the TF database file in that shared folder, and then both people could work from that TF DB file.

Would this work?

After the death of Bento, I researched options very extensively. I assigned one of my employees to the task for 4 business days. He then presented the solutions to me, I experimented with the options, and landed on TF. You are correct, there is hole in the market. But synchronous multi-user DB access is quite advanced. Bento was quite unusual in its ability to do this.

[Brendan]

Hi Bill,

I’m not really sure this is a good idea, but you could give it a try (on a backup database) to see what happens.

Read this FAQ from the SQLite people:

http://www.sqlite.org/faq.html#q5

Basically they say it can work if you’re not using an NFS file system. However, Tap Forms itself wouldn’t update the data on screen if someone changed something in the background unless you maybe clicked off a form and clicked back on it. Or for example, if someone renamed a category, you might not see that change until you quit the app and relaunched it. Or at the very least opened up the categories popover and then closed it again (because I refresh the categories when you do that).

So although it might work, I can’t really recommend it and if things go wrong, please don’t come to my house with a shotgun in hand :-)

Thanks!

Brendan

[mrbill]

As always, thanks Brendan- Your reply time is amazing.

It was the same way in Bento. My wife and I used to share a DB and it was not dynamic. There had to be an action that required a screen refresh such as change to a diff form (library), or something like that. Might be worth giving it a try.

Thx.

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