Offline use

[John]

Hi

We have an access app (both front & back ends are in access) that runs over
win server networks. There are now more and more users who would like to
take away a copy of app with them, work offline, and when they come back
expect the client copy to sync (both ways) with the server copy. Seems like
a reasonable requirement. The question is; what do I need to do to make this
happen? Do I need to switch the backend to sql server? Front end to vb or
something like that? Anything else? How do other people do this?

Thanks

Regards

 

[Val Mazur \(MVP\)]

Hi John,

You definitely need some central place for the database. In a case if you
have pretty big number of users, I would suggest to use some server-type
database SQL Server or something else. On a user side if you use .NET, then
you could store data in a DataSets locally. ADO.NET datasets allow to store
them in a XML files. Later you could load DataSet back into application and
update it against actual database

 

[Doug Bell]

Hi John,

My advice is that if you have SQL Server use it.
It does depend on how many users you have but Access really was not designed
to cope with lots of concurrent users.

You can use Access Replication but that could be slow depending on the
amount of data you need to replicate and later versions of Access would not
support partial replication.

I would seriously consider using VB Dot Net to build a new User Interface
and use Datasets to retrieve and update the data, you can serialise the data
into XML files on the Users PCs. You then do not need to license Access on
those PCs.

The downside of this approach is the development time but the solution is
intrinsically more robust.

Doug

 

[mboizeau]

You can swhitch the back end to SQL Server and keep the same user
machine interface. You just need to move your acces tables to
sqlServer. Then you attache them ( here you will find with other
stuffs an Access vba code to do that :
http://oraclevsmicrosoft.blogspot.com/2004/10/using-updatable-views-in-access.html
, it was designed for Oracle but it should works fine with sql Server).

At this time you may experiment deployement troubles regarding the
number of users and their work places.
You may consider changes your front end to ASP.net .

If he users are not on the LAN but connected to internet , you may
consider to use Web Services on a secure channel and a winform client.


hope this helps

http://oraclevsmicrosoft.blogspot.com

 

[Ken Tucker [MVP]]

Hi,

Here is a sample app that uses sql server.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/d...ry/en-us/dndotnet/html/northwindunplugged.asp

Ken
-----------------
Hi

We have an access app (both front & back ends are in access) that runs over
win server networks. There are now more and more users who would like to
take away a copy of app with them, work offline, and when they come back
expect the client copy to sync (both ways) with the server copy. Seems like
a reasonable requirement. The question is; what do I need to do to make this
happen? Do I need to switch the backend to sql server? Front end to vb or
something like that? Anything else? How do other people do this?

Thanks

Regards