Hi Thomas,
The External Datasource is built using the product details from those libraries that make up your Offline Libraries. This process is automatic (when you select Tools | External Datasource) and you can manually add products that appear in My Libraries, i.e. the symbols you create yourself. We recommend that users always download the manufacturer libraries they use on a regular basis into Offline Libraries using the Synchronize process, either select Options | Synchronize Offline Libraries or rightclick in the Library List and select Synchronize. This sets you up for use of the External Datasource.
To use the External Datasource with multiple users, set it up on one machine then copy that spreadsheet to a shared resource, e.g. a network drive. This becomes your master data source. Then update the local spreadsheet to link, cell by cell, to the master. Copy the linked 'client' spreadsheet to the other user's machines. This way each local 'client' links to the master and the master can be edited: the changes you make will ripple through to all the clients and the fact that it's a link means that the master will not be locked for editing.
Use of a database is possible but I'd need to know a bit more about your particular situation. For example, if you already have an ERP system (or similar) this database already contains all the data and, probably, the functionality you want. For example, you already have pricing data in the ERP system, and you use it to generate quotations, invoices etc. In this case it is likely that each product you use has a unique ID so in Stardraw you could use the External Datasource to define the relationship between our product details and your product ID - this would be a single field. Then the only report you'd need from a Stardraw design is "Quantity" and "Product ID" - you can then pass this back into your ERP system and do whatever you want in your existing system.
I hope this is helpful.
Kind regards,
Rob Robinson
Stardraw.com