LMS-1467 Allow multiple users to edit the same schedule

Feature summary request

Allow multiple users to work on the same schedule, by fragmenting/locking schedules at lower levels (e.g. schedule paragraphs).

Currently, Lawmaker fragments a Bill at the level of sections and schedules and, as a result, those are the level at which locks operate too. This means that multiple users cannot edit the same schedule as the whole schedule might be locked by a single user. It is worth noting that schedules can be quite big in size - fragmenting schedules at lower levels would also allow users to edit portions of a schedule.

When looking at this feature improvement, attention should be paid to the performance consequences of fragmenting a schedule at lower levels, as this would massively increase the number of locks and thus have an impact on performance.

Original description

When working in a Schedule, a lock is always acquired for the whole Schedule. This prevents more than one user working on a Schedule at a time (and they can be quite big - sometimes bigger than Parts of Bills). Ideally locks would engage at the Schedule Paragraph level.

This is linked in a way to the request about yellow underlines on multiple schedules (as the user is getting around this by artificially having two Schedules which will be merged in due course - and is annoyed that the workaround is having that effect)..

From Fraser Gough in PCO ( LMS-530 Done ):

The current behaviour is that when one user edits any paragraph of a schedule, the whole schedule is locked against any other user.

This can be contrasted with the behaviour in the body of a Bill or instrument, where editing a section (or equivalent) takes a lock only on that element not the whole body (or any container of that body).

It would be helpful if schedules worked more like the body in this regard (i.e. locking when editing the text of a paragraph were restricted to that paragraph). There’s nothing intrinsic to the nature of a schedule, from a drafter’s perspective, which means we’re more likely to want to edit the whole than we’re likely to want to edit the whole body.