Accessing, reading, modifying and updating records in Access database over network. How?

[David Hearn]

I have an existing Windows application written in VB.NET on my desktop
that uses an Access 2000 database for storage of data. I am writing an
application for my PPC that needs to gain access to those records over
a network (WI-FI) so that I can modify them and then save them back. I
have been reading some of the posts in this group, but now I am more
confused than I was before. Some posts make it sound like it can't be
done at all and some of them make it sound like it can be done, but
that it is a major pain. I have several .NET apps under my belt now,
but I am a newbie to the CF and WI-FI as well.

First of all, can someone give me a straight answer on this? If what I
want to do is not possible, what are my alternatives? Also, can
someone recommend a good book (or books) about the CF and programming
for WI-FI or maybe some good articles on web sites that I can read and
maybe download some examples, preferrably in VB.NET?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Chris Tacke, eMVP]

Sure. My thought is that just about everything can be done, the question is
is whether it's worth the time and effort required to implement. Take this
case - can it be done? Sure. Is it easy? Definitely no. Is it worth
doing? Well, it's not going to be extensible or scalable, and maintenace
will suck. If the decision were mine I would seriously look at architecting
some alternative solution. Now I realize that's not always possible. We're
in the real world, we've got real customers and real projects. If you must
do this, you'll need to write something that resides on the PC. It will
"listen" - likely through a socket - for requests from your app on the CE
device. It then processes ther requests and returns the result. The
challenges will be in what you require. If you need synchronization, that's
extra complexity. If you have multiple possible clients, then you need
conflict resolution - another layer of complexity. Ultimately, it's your
choice and only you can decise if it's worth doing. Me, I'd keep my
fingerprints of that train wreck.

-Chris

 

[David Hearn]

Chris,

I appreciate the response. I didn't think it was going to be easy.
Would it be easier if I converted my data and stored it in an XML file
(database) and read it from there and updated back to the XML file? Is
the CF any good at that?

Thanks again!

David Hearn

 

[Alex Feinman [MVP]]

So far when a question like this pops up, I've been recommending using a web
service. It should work rather well over wifi connection. You can leverage
existing VB.NET code that accesses your database in the desktop application
by using it in the web service. It is possible even to return complex object
from the web service and have them properly deserialized on the device side,
but many times simply returning a dataset works fine