FW: Updating Shapefiles, and data integrity

[Paul G. Allen]

"Fawcett, David" wrote:

> This may be fine as an "extension", but if it became integral, it would certainly change the product from a free program to a pretty expensive one.
>
> Even if a non-commercial solution to this issue is a little kludgy and slower than real-time, it may serve most people's needs, and will avoid spendy Oracle or SDE licenses.
>

[BIG_HUGE_SNIP]

I know little about database software, but wouldn't something like Postgres SQL  (postgresql) or MySQL work for this? Also, Oracle 8i and IBM's DB2 are free for personal use and
development under Linux. Would either of those work? My brother (not on this list, but maybe he should be) said it sounds to him like what is needed is a relational database to
handle the three files - .dbf, .shp, .shx. He also said the only database software he knew of that handles record locking is Paradox, where the others use file locking.

PGA