[Owncloud] Possible to extend OwnCloud to sync Zotero databases?

[Felix Lenders]

Hi,

Advrk Aplmrkt wrote:

> Zotero can use any arbitrary WebDAV share as a sync for its database.
> However, there is no online access to the database, i.e. you have to
> sync it onto your computer and use the desktop client to view your
> data.

If I understand http://www.zotero.org/support/sync correctly, that is not 
the case. Zotero can only use the official Zotero server to store the 
database und to synchronize. However it can use arbitrary WebDAV shares for 
synchronizing the binary data (i.e. pdf).

> If you sync to the official Zotero server, there is a web interface to
> your database.
> 
> Felix: Is web/online access what you were referring to?

That would be a nice add on. But I am referring to not to have to have a 
Zotero account and to synchronize the database to their server but rather to 
my own server. After all, that is the idea of the _own_ cloud.
The very easiest way to do this would be to store and synchronize the 
zotero.sqlite. But this has some obvious flaws, since one can safely only to 
this if Zotero is closed and one cannot perform a 3-way merge.
So I thought about storing the Zotero database in the Owncloud database let 
Owncloud mimic the Zotero server.

Of course this is a major project which also involves making the Zotero 
client speak to other servers than their own and therefore has to be done in 
cooperation with Zotero. But I think it might be worth it because managing 
papers and books is a task every scientists has to do and those are in my 
eyes sensible data comparable to emails. And if ebooks will play a more 
important role, it could be a nice way to organize ebooks and then also use 
Owncloud to sync them. This might become a major use case and could further 
push Owncloud and set apart from other Cloud solutions.

Felix