P: Allow Catalog to be stored on a networked drive.

Oh I completely concur, being insulting is counter productive, just like being patronized, and stonewalled. Double talk is also frustrating.

It's why rather than 20 years of working with computers, I apparently used my lowly armchair developer methods of google and the interweb instead to point out the flaws in the SQlite implementation, and how the "engineer's" arguments were inadequate for why we can't simply have features that should be "standard" by now. I completely didn't offer a solution, see, I'm not staff - but I sure can see what ya'll missed.

It's like getting home and opening the bonnet of my Lamborghini to show off the powerplant and finding a Pinto engine - and then have the company rep call me names when I point it out.

Cuz it's exactly like that.

If you want the feature to happen: tell us what you want, and why you need it - or just add a +1 vote at the top.

Trying to insult the product team, second guess design decisions, and telling the much more experienced experts how to do their jobs... is counterproductive to your cause.

This type of condescension is EXACTLY what I'm talking about.

"Lightroom already has journaling." It's a database, of COURSE it has journaling. News flash - SQlite has had this magic feature since 2004.
(oh i totally googled the date on that one)

This thread began a year ago. In that time a whole slew of ideas and discussion from your customers were put forth. Dan actually was rather supportive at the beginning and then just towed party line.

But the fact remains that MS Dynamics, SAP, Simply, Quickbooks does this, Excel does this, and on and on and on and on and on, oh wait... my lowly mySQL database on my webby site also does this when - you know, staff and clients access it and modify the same files at once?

The only caveats Chris are that "some" programs allow full multi-user access - others simply allow for single user - albiet still being "shared".

SQlite natively does BUT.

But for us windows users, you guys crippled us right off the bat as SQLlite doesn't play nice on NTSF, or even FAT for multi-access - and half of that issue is MS's fault.

So at the very least Adobe could have allowed Lightroom to open an instance of the lcat "locally" and allow THAT to be used as the "live file" with incremental saves to the original upon actual exit/save by the user.

The .lcat is just simply a DB file. Like a PST. That's it! Row, columns, text - data.
An overblown spreadsheet shaped data container.
No big mystery, no secret knowledge required.

Look, no one said it's "easy". It's just nowhere near anywhere even remotely as complicated as you're selling.

You know, 'cuz it's an issue with the open source DB software you guys chose to build on. Can't really say that lends credence to your "Adobe engineers have much more experience".
Much more experience dealing with whatever frankencode they made sure, but not in real world application where we'd use a database engine that was full fledged.

Regardless - it would appear Adobe simply should have told us all from the start that due to choosing a cheap inferior database implementation, we cannot enjoy a "reliable" network use of our files.

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

then read the next FAQ tip #6

Look - obviously I like the software, obviously I use the software, obviously I pay for the software, obviously 90% of your customers are not idiots.

Stop treating us like it and provide the functionality and software experience we are used to.

I don't mind if it takes till the next release, you're already all of the releases too late anyway.
I frankly don't care if you have to rewrite lightroom and pay royalties for MySQL or whatever.

I'm stoked it LOOKS pretty, can it not WORK pretty too?
I'd much rather it work first and look pretty later.

IMHO as an armchair developer.

Sounds good to me. I just don't care how you implement the multi user feature (well, what technologies you'll use and ways you follow), I just hope it will be part of Lightroom soon !

Lightroom's database already has journaling, as you can see Dan reference a few months ago.

And have you considered that possibly the Adobe engineers have much more experience at these tasks than you do? Perhaps they don't have time or desire to simplify every issue involved to your level of understanding?

They have not completely dismissed the idea of shared catalogs, but have tried to explain that achieving such a feature is much more complicated than it sounds to an armchair developer. There is an important difference between "No" and "it will take time".

Oh of course what I wrote could be considered rude, but IO is IO... If I have a file "in use" over any form of network, or a web server, the file system or traffic management normally has some form of error correction / and or data recovery - no differently than PS using a temp file that you edit before you save it - it's why when it crashes you "lose" it - unless the software has the ability to "remember and reopen" it's temp file for recovery - so yes it's verifiable.
Excel does it, word, any ODBC connection, any database, even myphp does it. All manage data with some basic form "safeguard" against a sudden disconnect.
So no I'm not pulling "experience rank" any more than "they" are, I'm simply calling shenanigans because I have experience with issues they seem to be thwarted by.

Instead of focusing useful replies to people's complaints or suggestions or what have you, in the majority of cases we're told to like it or lump it, and that's not a normal response of companies that "care". We - as paying users are not normally so uninformed that we have to just "accept what we're provided, and that's why I was being more "direct". I have no personal beef against any adobe staff, I actually like a whole slew of things about the software I use - it's why I use it - but being politically correct in forums is tedious, and wastes time, so facts are facts. I don't know WHY "we" are being treated like we're 5 yrs old, or why "we" are being treated derisively.

It is a bit much, you complaining about rudeness. The fact that you either can't tell the difference, or are pretending not to know the difference, between database IO traffic and web service traffic says something.

It is nice that you have experience with servers and desktops, lots of people here do, but lets not get into trying to pull rank here, it is neither interesting nor verifiable.

thanks for chiming in again Dan. You're tired of misguided complaints, as we are tired of lame excuses.

Look, the fact is that of course it's NOT your fault. Seriously, I have no delusion that you personally are an issue, nor am I, as a person, upset at your efforts - see, I don't know you, your talents, skills, or role in your occupation. So it would be unacceptable for me to "call you names".

I do however have quite ample database knowledge and over 15 years in IT security and implementation ranging from servers to lowly home computers - which frankly are far harder to maintain than servers because people just have to install everything, all the time, even when it's all the same, and expect the world for $19.99

If I didn't have my job, and instead maybe had your job, I could likely - with a team - apply the feature requests people ask for (apparently including my own co-workers).

Of course some requests are foolish (like adding BMP and GIF support when bridge does this) compared to the needs of the majority, but the person has the right to make the request, and should not be treated as if they are foolish in their request.

Personally, I have spent at least $2000 every three years since photoshop 3, and frankly if it would run on my 64bit quad core computer, I'd happily go back to it, content aware be damned.

So do the math on that. Adobe's sh*t ain't cheap, and I've been paying - and likely far less than other power users on here.

Additionally, workflow today is NOT limited to one computer - it's why I believe Adobe offers a single user but TWO computer license for desktop and laptop through Creative Cloud. Oh wait - it's why you released Revel right? But not for the PC yet because apple users pay far more quickly for all things adobe.

I apologize if while installing lightroom 4 on my laptop I was flabbergasted that I could not open a catalog over my network - even as a single user over the network without leaping through hoops.

So no, I'm not impressed that basic functionality is overlooked - I have noticed quite a few things that have simply - finally - made me have such an aneurysm at the lack luster offerings and over glorification of overpriced junk that I can no longer remain silent. And it's not just Adobe that's given up on treating it's customers like customers.

You guys are there to make software, and it's like THE only software designers need and you're shafting us, badly, just to sell subscriptions to overlapping cloud products - which apparently "does what we want" - but we can't have it in the more expensive desktop version because of networking issues?
And you're not even out performing other non adobe cloud companies?

Lastly, the A#1 excuse for no network catalogs is "corruption" - So if my internet connection goes awry, I'll have no glitch with a database on your website with Revel or Creative Cloud, or - oh I was going to list the other ten products but what ever - , but if my local network does, I crash out my whole lightroom?

We aren't stupid. We aren't lemmings, and we aren't happy. Stop being so condescending and perhaps write the software we are paying you to write.

I've spent the last few days reading over the comments Adobe Staff such as you, jeffery and chris have been making to people and it's shocking how rude you all are - and actually in some cases incited flaming.

This is the Idea section of the forum - thank's for crapping on our common sense request.

I don't work directly on the Lightroom team anymore (though I still work in a role that supports them, it would have nothing to do with the feature(s) on this thread). Even when I was on the team, I wasn't in a role where I'd be implementing this particular feature, I just happen to have enough knowledge of databases, filesystems, and distributed synchronization challenges to respond to some misconceptions on this thread.

Besides, I sorted out my multi-machine workflow years ago and if I built a solution that would be best for me, it wouldn't be relevant to most of the folks on this thread anyway (for reasons I won't try to explain).

I actually unsubscribed just now so I stop getting all the replies via e-mail. This also means I won't be around to correct misguided notions like "this would be easy if it was built on MySQL instead of SQLite", "row level locking is an important part of why this hasn't happened yet", etc.

I mention this just so nobody else asks any more questions and wonders why I don't respond further.

Even something as simple as keeping a license activated is becoming more than Adobe can manage. I have already dumped my Adobe XI and went with freeware that gets the job done just as well and doesn't keep losing authentication causing me to have to waste an hour or more on the phone with Adobe support. When it is time to replace Lightroom and my Creative Master Suite, you can bet I will be shopping around. Adobe is getting to the point where they are pi**ing off long standing customers by ignoring our needs and pushing out software that doesn't meet our needs and won't even stay activated. Adobe is on the verge of finding out they are NOT too big to fail.