Please help my workflow!

fozzy40
I would like to integrate Zotero, Mendeley, and Dropbox over two desktop computers to store journal articles and books. My issue is that I don't have much disk space.

I would like to use Dropbox to save and access my account for both Zotero and Mendeley.

I do also have a rapidshare account if this might help things.

Is this possible?
  • fozzy40
    Also let me mention that the reason I use Mendeley basically is that I like the PDF editor in it. I'm open to another PDF editor that functions similarly if taking Mendeley out of the equation makes it easier.
  • adamsmith
    I don't see how dropbox would save you diskspace - my understanding is that it syncs files to the local disk.
    It's probably possible to create a symlink to your Zotero storage folder and place it in your Dropbox folder. Just, whatever you do, _do not_ place your actual Zotero database - zotero.sqlite - into dropbox.
    Maybe you could have Mendeley watch that folder then to integrate the two? I don't know Mendeley that well.

    As for pdf editor - the standard options for PC are Foxit and PDFXchange, both work pretty nicely.
  • fozzy40
    Show's you how much I know about data storage:)

    Any suggestions for online data storage then that might accommodate my needs? I've been hearing sugarsync might be a nice option.
  • adamsmith
    sugarsync does the same as dropbox: They take a folder from your local disk, sync it to the web, and then sync it back to the local disk of another computer. Having the files online only would be too slow.
  • fozzy40
    Any suggestions? I have about 1.7gigs of files. Should I just carry them around on a USB or something?
  • fozzy40
    Adam,

    "Just, whatever you do, _do not_ place your actual Zotero database - zotero.sqlite - into dropbox."

    Why not?
  • fbennett
    edited July 8, 2011
    Sqlite is not designed to handle overlapping accesses (reads and writes) from different callers gracefully. As a result, if an sqlite database is accessible to more than one client at the same time, the database is almost certain to become corrupted at some point (probably fairly soon, but possibly after some time has passed and everything seems to be working fine). Since the database is the foundation of the entire system, corruption there is about as bad as it comes.

    (Edit: The problem of simultaneous access would be aggravated by placing the file in dropbox, since changes could then be made on two copies of the database locally on two separate machines, followed by a dropbox sync between the two versions via the dropbox server, which would map the changes in both directions. This would make it impossible for clients to protect against simultaneous access by a locking mechanism, since at run-time each local copy of the database is accessed only by a single client.)
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