database recomendations

[Guest]

I am trying to create a searchable database for members of my department It
should allow me to store thousands of problems, related solutions, support
documentation and contact information and have dozens of people using it
simultaneously. I have attempted to put this together in Access 2003 but
remain unhappy with the results and frearful that as hundreds of people use
the DB I'll end up with problems. I am starting to believe that Access is
not the best application for our needs.

What I'm looking for is a bit of advice on how to proceed. Should I abandon
Access for another app? Should I use something like Visual Studio? Can I get
Access to allow all of these people in without any hangups?

Thanks for the advice and happy 4th.

 

[Rotsey]

If you want to use Access for the benefit of rapid development
then you probably best to use SQL 2005 Express as a DB server
and link the access tables.

This should help with the number of users issue.

i have found access with 10 or more users corrupts the DB.

But Acces will allow users to query the DB easily and build
reports.

Otherwise I suggest if you know how to develop in Visual Studio
then this would be a better solution. You can still use SQL express
in this environment. That is if you don't have access to SQL 2005.
You will need to implement measures for concurrency in this
scenario.

Just some thoughts
rotsey.

 

[Albert D. Kallal]

Well, if you starting out with "dozens" of users all hitting the same
database, then you can keep your front end as ms-access, and the back should
likely be sql server.

I not sure what you mean "unhappy" with the results.

Can I get
Access to allow all of these people in without any hangups?

I suggest you read the following article of mine:

http://www.members.shaw.ca/AlbertKallal/Articles/split/index.htm

in the above, I explain the "developer" mentally you must adopt to get
reliability.

I am starting to believe that Access is

not the best application for our needs.

Well, it depends on how many users, and what you plan to built for those
users.

 

[Guest]

Hi,
I think Rotsey is giving you some good advice. You can download SQL Server
2005 Express Edition from Microsoft or you can email Dan Fernandez at
Microsoft and he may be able to mail you a free CD with SQL Server 2005
Express, NET Framework 2.0., Visual Basic (or you can choose C#, C++, or
Java) 2005 Express , and MSDN Library 2005 Express. It all comes on one CD.
I received one from him about a month ago. His email address is : Dan dot
Fernandez at microsoft dot com.

You can still use your tables with SQL Server and keep Access as your Front
End. If you do a google search you will find a lot of information about this
on the web.

Best Regards,
Hunter57

 

[Tony Toews [MVP]]

i have found access with 10 or more users corrupts the DB.

Whereas I've had clients running 25 users with maybe one easily fixed
corruption every two years.

Still with hundreds of users as mentioned in the original posting I
would strongly recommend SQL Server.

Otherwise I suggest if you know how to develop in Visual Studio
then this would be a better solution. You can still use SQL express
in this environment. That is if you don't have access to SQL 2005.
You will need to implement measures for concurrency in this
scenario.

I'd still use Access as it is a faster tool to create a database
solution than VS.

Tony
--
Tony Toews, Microsoft Access MVP
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