JavaFX program - How to keep TableView data synchronized amount different client computers?

I'm new to Java and just started writing some JavaFX applications.

My current project is to write an application for a consulting company that store a list of customers, add them to a queue and serve them one by one. There are a few staffs and they will running a copy of the application I write on their PC.

What I've done so far:

1. create Customer.class to handle personal info and store them in a MySQL db

2. create Staff.class to handle staff info

3. create Service.class to handle kind of services are available for the customers

4. create Consultation.class to handle info of a particular consultation such as date of consultation, customer being served, which staff is providing service, the services offered and the outcome

5. create an ObservableArrayList<Consultation>, store the data in the MySQL db, and display the data on a TableView of each client PC

What I want to do is, after a staff editing the data in the list, the changes will be updated on the TableView of other client PCs automatically.

The possible solutions I can think of includes:

Option 1

Program the application to query the db regularly for an update.
This method is more simple to implement, but I don't want to keep the MySQL server busy by non-stop querys from a number of clients. I do not want any delay between data write and update on other clients. There are more than 10 clients. If each client update once a second, that will mean at least 10 queries per second and the server will never rest. I don't want to put any stress on the server's harddisk.

Option 2

Program the application to broadcast a message every time after they write data to the db and other clients query the database every time they receive a broadcast. I prefer do it this way but I'm not familiar with network programming. That will mean I'll have to spend some time on it before I can continue the project.

Which of the above is a better choice? Is there other way to keep the TableView on the clients keep synchronized?

> Which of the above is a better choice? Is there another way to keep the TableView on the clients keep synchronized?

Before choosing - you may consider optimizing them,

1. Option 1 seems quite expensive as it has to request frequently. But you can optimize it using connection-pool and specifying certain time-interval(minimum 10 sec) to fetch the data.

2. Option2 is much more convincing as it applies the lazy-loading concept. You may consider looking socket programming to notify all clients to fetch data.

It's quite hard to say which one is the better option - somehow, I prefer to go with the first approach if your application may insert data frequently, otherwise go with the second one.

An alternative solution - listening to the data changes

Here are some QA, these solutions may help you to implement your requirement.

• How to implement a DB listener in Java
• How to make a database listener with java?
• How to listen to new DB records through java