Run time engine?

[DougKalish]

Is it possible for me to download an Access file to my website and have users
open it online and enter data/get reports if they don't have Access on their
computer? If so how can this be done and is there anyone out there who might
do this for me? I am age 67 with little computer knowledge and I asked a
friend of mine to create a data base for my fishing guide service and would
like my customers to be able to open it, use it and then download reports
from it. Of course I'll be happy to pay if it's not too expensive. Thanks!

 

[Norman Yuan]

By "to download an Access file to my website", I take it as "upload to my
website", right?

Direct to your question: the situation you imagined is basically not
workable.

When you say online, I bet you mean connected to your website via the
Internet with a browser. The protocol used for this type of connection does
not support open file (or *.mdb database, in your case) over the Internet as
you do with a local network. When user browse to your database file, they
can do is to download the database file to their computer. Then, yes, they
can access data in the database file: if they has MS Access, they can
read/edit data in it; if they do not have MS Access, they can download MS
Access2007 runtime for free and then access data in the database file; they
can even use other tools to access data in the file or write their own
program to access data in the file with VB, .NET.... The problem is, after
they are done with the database file, they must upload it back to your
website. Now, do you want your user upload database file to your website,
how do you prevent the upload from users does not overwrite to each other,
and how do you collect data scattered in each user's uploaded database file
back into one single database?...

What you need is a web application, like most the web pages you see on the
Internet. The web application is hosted in your website with a database (can
be an access database, but it is not recommended in most cases, unless you
have very limited traffic and you do not worry too much of its occasional
down time for database repairing/compacting). A simple database web
application can be done fairly easy with varius technology, Java, ASP,
ASP.NET....but certainly not MS Access itself.