I often use SQLite for creating simple programs in companies. The database is placed on a file server. This works fine as long as there are not more than about 50 users working towards the database concurrently (though depending on whether it is reads or writes). Once there are more than this, they will notice a slowdown if there are a lot of concurrent writing on the server as lots of time is spent on locks, and there is nothing like a cache as there is no database server.

The advantage of not needing a database server is that the time to set up something like a company Wiki or similar can be reduced from several months to just days. It often takes several months because some IT-department needs to order the server and it needs to conform with the company policies and security rules and it needs to be placed on the outsourced server hosting facility, which screws up and places it in the wrong localtion etc. etc.

Therefore, I thought of an idea to create a distributed database server. The process would be as follows: A user on a company computer edits something on a Wiki page (which uses this database as its backend), to do this he reads a file on the local harddisk stating the ip-address of the last desktop computer to be a database server. He then tries to contact this computer directly via TCP/IP. If it does not answer, then he will read a file on the file server stating the ip-address of the last desktop computer to be a database server. If this server does not answer either, his own desktop computer will become the database server and register its ip-address in the same file. The SQL update statement can then be executed, and other desktop computers can connect to his directly.

The point with this architecture is that, the higher load, the better it will function, as each desktop computer will always know the ip-address of the database server. Also, using this setup, I believe that a database placed on a fileserver could serve hundreds of desktop computers instead of the current 50 or so. I also do not believe that the load on the single desktop computer, which has become database server will ever be noticable, as there will be no hard disk operations on this desktop, only on the file server.

Is this idea feasible? Does it already exist? What kind of database could support such an architecture?