Picasa on multiple viewing stations accessing images on a mapped network drive

[trailb...@gmail.com]

Hi.  

Sorry for asking this question here, but it appears the main picasa forum has been closed. 

I propose to run picasa on multiple viewing station computers in an event photography capacity, possibly with up to a dozen viewing stations.  

I propose using:

1. One main computer that takes the photographs from the tethered DSLR, renaming the filenames as they ingest (e.g. Cam01Sta01-randomcode-0001.jpg) and writes them to a partitioned drive, e.g. P:.  Random code comes from a printed barcode that is then handed to the portrait subject.

2. Several viewing stations that have each mapped the P: drive from the server and are each running picasa. Each computer has an attached computer USB scanner and as the customer approaches the viewing station with their code, an assistant takes and scans their code and finds their images. This works perfectly currently.

3. They chose their images that they want to purchase using full screen preview and through which the assistant stars their choices with picasa and prints out.   

So far so good.  

 

Is there any reason why multiple computers, each with their own copy of picasa and using a local picasa database, cannot access and search the images on a networked P: drive simultaneously? I think this is possible, but is it?  My concern is that the picasa.ini file in the picture folder on the P: drive is going to be written to by multiple computers at the same time. Is this a worry?  

I know this is different from the main purpose of picasastareter - to have one networked picasa database which can be read by multiple computers that synchronise.  In my circumstances, I don't mind that each viewing station can have its own copy of the picasa database as it is only being used for a very quick choice and print out.  Images will be deleted on a daily basis and using folder manager to search a single folder with 'todays' date.

Thanks