Hello. I am a doctoral student setting up DEVONthink for the first time. I have installed on both my iMac (1TB storage) and my Macbook pro (256GB storage). My question is for the local sync does it matter (storage wise) which is the server and which is the client? I expect my research to contain very few pics or videos (if any) and will contain mostly text, annotations, PDFs, word docs, diagrams). I am not very techie so forgive if my question is a non-issue. Sometimes it helps to hear that!
Hi! If you’re doing a Bonjour Sync, it doesn’t matter. If you were Syncing to a local syncStore on one machine, then it would.
As a native English [American actually] speaker, I would say that is an accurate but insufficient answer. I would guess, the questioner would like to know if it does matter, what is the difference and when should it matter and what to do.
That is characteristic of many of the answers on this forum. There is a tremendous wealth of data on the forum, but there is not enough translation of the data into information.
I am curious if that is a language and cultural issue as I speak some French, German, Dutch, Japanese, and English [do read the French and German forums occasionally] and have run across similar issues when living in those countries. ie literal translation or answers which do not really answer the question being asked. It is very tough to translate language or culture, but I do wonder if that is part of the issue particularly with all the back and forth I have seen with sync and also with DTTG 1 and 2 usage.
I enjoy reading the forums and appreciate all the contributions from Devonthink folks and Devonthink users. They have been very useful to me.
A simple question was asked.
A simple answer was given, in consideration for someone who claims to not be tech-savvy. (I even hesitated to include the second sentence, as it wasn’t directly specified.)
I have been doing Support for well over a decade (as well as teaching and training everywhere, from small shops to a multinational corporation for 30+ years). Most people want “an answer to a question”. Though there are times when supplemental information is offered, belaboring someone with answers they haven’t asked for is not my practice. I prefer dialogue over monologue.
PS: I am as American as it gets (despite the Teutonic last name). 
The replies I received are both practical and entertaining. As a non-tech savvy person, I appreciated the brevity and simplicity - I got an answer to my question, as I am in fact using Bonjour. Shall I infer that if I were to use a local sync store say using Dropbox then it would matter which is the client and server?
Finally, the replies also appealed to the scholar in me. A question can be answered in many ways. Among them, are answers based on a literal response to a literal interpretation of the question (low inference) or a response based on an assessment of the meaning of the question (conceptually perhaps). It is true that sometimes a richer understanding is achieved by utilizing this latter form of reply.
Thanks to you both.
I was aware that you were American, somewhere it had popped on the forums. I am actually more Texan 
. I was not referring to your answers particularly but really a more general observation on answers in these forums.
Maybe it is more of a Devonthink forum cultural issue. I find it fascinating how different company forums have different cultures and answer questions and have dialogues that can be very different.
Keep up the great work. I am one of the ones who have shifted most of my evernote usage to DTPO in addition to my normal DTPO usage of many years and it has worked very well since DTTG 2 is out.
Now if you can just improve the AI to anticipate what I need in my research…
Nope. In fact, you don’t want to use the Local Sync Store option with Dropbox, as its specifically supported.
I meant that if you created a Local Sync Store on Machine A and wanted to Sync Machine B with it, you’d need to mount the drive of Machine A to set up the Sync location and Sync with it. This means A would effectively host the syncStore, and B would need to be connected to A to Sync to it.
This is workable but not necessarily ideal for most cases.
If you had a local syncStore on an external drive or NAS, neither machine would be a server. They would both be Syncing to the syncStore, as a client would.
@nishiazabu : Indeed, the culture and tone are different in different forums. I worked for Ironic Software for 4.5 years and the differences between their Forums and ours is markedly noticeable.
No offense taken! Cheers! 
ok, this got a a little confusing. Following the directions within the tutorials I set up my iMac as a client using Bonjour. I imported the database I had originally created on my MacBook Pro (acting as server). As I begin adding things to Devonthink Pro, where do they actually reside? I am not really sure how Bonjour negates the concern over storage.
Inside the database, wherever you saved it on the local machine.
This is a very simple thing.
Bonjour is just broadcasting the presence of DEVONthink on your network.
Each machine is working with its own local copy of the database.
When you Sync, it just transmits changes between the Syncing machines.
And an admonition (just in case): You should never put your databases in any cloud-synced folder (including the Documents or Desktop folders if you are using the disk management feature in macOS 10.12 Sierra). Never. If you have, you must relocate them immediately or you could irreparably damage them. The safest location is a folder in your Home Directory, like ~/Databases. If you have them in an unsafe locations, quit DEVONthink and move your databases to a new folder in your Home directory.
Good to know. One follow up question. on the iMac a created a new database for another project I am working on, but I would like that to sync with the MacBookPro. In this scenario, the iMac is the server correct? So I would have to again follow the tutorial and set up a connect using Bonjour similar to what I did on the MacBook Pro originally. Each machine will now how an incoming Bonjour connection. Correct?
Yep. That’s exactly right. The iMac would be serving its own database to the other machine. And it’s literally as easy as:
Turn On Bonjour on the iMac.
It should automatically appear in the Sync preferences on the MacBook Pro.
Check the checkbox next to it and enter the password, then import the database from the Remote section.
That’s it!