Security Between Different Access Versions

[Kevin Freckman]

I have a few questions dealing with passowrd protection in
Access because we are changing the confguration of our
network while instigating passowrd protection in Access.

Question 1) Part of the system presently has Office 97
products on it, and we are talking about securing a
database in Access 97. But we are alos going to update to
Office 2000 in 4 - 6 weeks. If I create secure logons in
Access 97, will that remain vaild in Access 2000? (Will
have to do the whole thing over when we update?)

Question 2) Another part of the reconfiguration is to
combine two LANs into a WAN. Part of the WAN will have
Access 2000 and part of it will have Access 2002. How
would security -- both by encryption and by passowrd
logon -- be affected?

Question 3) This is totally unrelated, but can Access 97
read data in Access 2000 format? Is there any real
difference between the two?)

Thank you one and all for your help.

 

[TC]

(snip)

Question 3) This is totally unrelated, but can Access 97
read data in Access 2000 format? Is there any real
difference between the two?)

There are significant differences "behind the scenes". Access 97 uses
version 3 of the MS Jet database engine (ie. Jet 3). Access 2000 uses
version 4 (ie. Jet 4). Jet 4 uses a different mdb format to Jet 3
(internally). For example, Jet 4 can store text in so-called Unicode
format. Jet 3 does not understand Unicode. For that & other reasons,
Access 97 can not open an Access 2000 db directly, nor can it link to
tables in an Access 2000 db.

However, all is not lost! Take your Access 97 (Jet 3) PC. It is
possible to install, on that PC, a copy of Jet 4, *without* installing
a copy of Access 2000, and without disturbing your existing Access 97
(Jet 3) installation.

Then, your Access 97 (Jet 3) db's will continue to work fine, but now
you will be able to read or write an Access 2000 (Jet 4) db directly
from Access 97 code, by asking Jet 4 to do the work for you. The code
looks something like this (from memory, cos I don't have Access here
to check):

dim oJet4 as object, o2kDB as object
set ojet4 = createobject ("dao.dbengine.36")
set o2kdb = ojet4.opendatabase ("path to the Access 2000 db")

' now you can do things to the Access 2000 db,
' via the o2kdb object; for example:

o2kdb.execute "CREATE TABLE ..."

' or:

dim rs as recordset
set rs = o2kdb.openrecordset ("SELECT * FROM MyTable WHERE ...")

' and so on.

I know this works, because I have tested it to ensure that the Access
97 version of my software product, will interoperate with a different
product (not written by me) which only comes in a Jet 4 version.

As to *how* to install Jet 4 on a Jet 3 machine, I can not answer that
for you. The "other" product (noted above) installed Jet 4 when it
installed itself. This did not affect my existing installation of Jet
3. So clearly this is possible.

HTH,
TC

 

[Lynn Trapp]

Answers inline

--
Lynn Trapp
MS Access MVP
www.ltcomputerdesigns.com
Access Security: www.ltcomputerdesigns.com/Security.htm

I have a few questions dealing with passowrd protection in
Access because we are changing the confguration of our
network while instigating passowrd protection in Access.

Question 1) Part of the system presently has Office 97
products on it, and we are talking about securing a
database in Access 97. But we are alos going to update to
Office 2000 in 4 - 6 weeks. If I create secure logons in
Access 97, will that remain vaild in Access 2000? (Will
have to do the whole thing over when we update?)

The security will be fine. However, you must use the A2K workgroup
administrator to join the A97 workgroup.

Question 2) Another part of the reconfiguration is to
combine two LANs into a WAN. Part of the WAN will have
Access 2000 and part of it will have Access 2002. How
would security -- both by encryption and by passowrd
logon -- be affected?

I've never known anyone to have any success with Access over a WAN. I
wouldn't recommend it, regardless of the version.

Question 3) This is totally unrelated, but can Access 97
read data in Access 2000 format? Is there any real
difference between the two?)

See TC's response to this.