7

Problem:

In our office we have an Access customer database that is about 20MB big. People mostly use it from within the office's LAN, but some other team members are external and they currently have the following workflow:

  • Ask somebody in the office to upload the file to an FTP server
  • Tell others to stop making changes in the database
  • Download the database, commit changes
  • Upload it to the FTP server and tell the office that it's usable again

Question:

What is the easiest way to allow those people to make changes to that database without needing to resort to the methods above?

There should be no need for real "live" and collaborative editing, but the process should be fairly easy to learn for "normal" PC users and involve as little effort as possible for me on the developer/sysadmin side.

slhck
  • 235,242

3 Answers3

2

Consider a switch from using Access to using MS SQL. Access (2007 at least) has Wizards to help you convert pretty easily.

SQL will give you the availability and multi-user capabilities you seem to require in your DB.

Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007
  • 113,841
2

The simplest solution, although not necessarily the cheapest, is to allow your remote users access via Terminal Server/RDP. Now if you only have one user at a time using the app then you could easily dedicate a PC to this task and open a port on your firewall and route the traffic to that PC.

Also note that you should consider splitting your database into a front end and back end and allow multiple users to work with data at the same time on your local network. See See the Splitting your app into a front end and back end Tips page.

slhck
  • 235,242
Tony Toews
  • 434
0

You could try a service that we offer- EQL Access. We enable you to either synchronise changes over the web to multiple, local versions of Access (GeoSync) or you can use OnWeb which lets users interact with Access via a web browser. It means no change to the way people use/develop Access and you can schedule syncs if you want it to occur on a regular basis.

I know I am (very) late to the party with an answer here but this is exactly what we designed the service to do.

ats
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