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Home > Archive > MCSD > January 2003 > Access DB or Another option ???
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Access DB or Another option ???
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| jpc1963 2003-01-01, 8:50 am |
| Happy New Year ,
I was recently given the question below and I was hoping that someone could help me. The company is running an Access database with Access forms front end and they want to have an end result of tight security as well as ease of use for the end user to access information from the database. Obviously there are budget constraints. The user community consists of about 50 people in the six locations. Network is a single domain Windows NT 4.0 with varied desktops, 95, 98 and XP.
How would you propose to have users access and enter data into a database to be shared by six locations throughout a state?
Thanks
Joe | |
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| They should do some serious investigating before deciding, but.... if budget constraints is absolutely non-negotiable, get them to check out MSDE.
MSDE (Microsoft Data Engine) is a cut-down version of SQL Server 2000. The main differences is that MSDE doesn't scale well (but far better than Access...), MSDE does not come with any UI (it's just the database engine), it doesn't contain all of the high end features you find in the full versions of SQL Server and - it's freely redistributable!
I'm just guessing here, but I think Microsoft is trying to position MSDE as a replacement for Access to avoid having to maintain two different database solutions.
Go to http://www.microsoft.com/sql/default.asp and search for "MSDE" if you want to know more. | |
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| 50 users in 6 remote locations (or 5 remote 1 local) is going to create hassle for either MSDE or Access (although J-Ho is absolutely right that MSDE is much better than Access in this regard).
If you need immediate updating, and all 50 users online concurrently then you'll need to scale up, and way beyond Access. Alternatively I would recommend distributing/caching all DB access through the middle-tier to restrict connections to <=5 or maybe 10 concurrent.
In this case, I think reality bites and if you need to support so many users across such a distributed environment then you need to spend the bucks on a proper SQL Server environment. You can always consider any interim solution as proof-of-concept. In this case MSDE is ideal, you can bump it upwards later on with relatively minor changes.
Incidentally, I do vote for the elimination of Access for anything other playground apps - but as for its removal, I'm not so sure - I mean Foxpro is still doing the rounds!-) I don't want to start a flame-war but who the hell uses either for serious applications? Cynical maybe, but I'm sure they exist purely as a potential barrier to market entry. |
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