Advice: import data, or reference?

Okay, so I’m currently working on an app for the business, and rather than re-create all the contacts/projects, etc., I was going to use FreeAgent API. Initial tests are promising (as in I can actually get the data) :smiley:

Now, do I want to actually store this data myself on the app’s database, or do I just want to reference/call the data each time?
Or what if I just store it locally (the JSON)?

It wouldn’t be too great if, for whatever reason, I cannot access FreeAgent, but what alternatives do I have?
Perhaps I could do a check to see if the data exists, and if not, basically say “yea, you can’t go ahead without the data”?

What latency is acceptable? Fetching data over a network will always take longer than fetching data from a local database.

However if you cache data in a local database, you then have two sources to keep in sync. The API doesn’t provide a good way to know when resources have been deleted in FreeAgent.

If you have a local database, how secure is it? Does it meet data privacy regulations?

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It’s used internally, by staff (or, just me).
Access is strictly on my local machine, for now, or my public server (same as I use for my website) in future.

I don’t think latency should be that much of an issue, since it would be very rare to change a client/project of a record after creation.