Unbound multiuser forms

[General Fear]

I have not found much information on the net that discusses unbound
forms.

I wanted to go the unbound route because I will have many concurrent
users. What I want to do is split the MDB in 2. The data will be on an
MDB on the server. The front end will be local on the end user's C
Drive.

To give you an idea at what I am doing, the local front end MDB that
is on the C Drive will retrieve a single record. Say, where customer
ID equals 123 returning just one record. The user changes the record
locally then sends it back to the server MDB.

In order to do this I have to manage concurrency in a multi user
setting. I have done this in the past with other software. But before
I go down this road in Access, I wanted to read more about this and
take advantage of the wisdom that is out there before I try it.

So folks. Any suggestions? Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Regards.

 

[Jeff Boyce]

Unbound forms would be one way to manage this.

Another way would be to use an unbound combobox in the header of the form,
to allow the user to select the record they wish to work on. The form
itself would be bound, to a query. The query would look to the form's
combobox to get a parameter (the rowID).

In the combobox's AfterUpdate event, you'd requery the form. The scenario
plays out like this -- open the form, it's empty (the combo box holds no
value, so the query that feeds the form returns "that" record). Select an
item in the combo box -- the afterupdate event trigger the form to requery
and the record selected is displayed for editing.

Does this approximate what you are trying to do?

As for the concurrency issue, you can have the query put an exclusive lock
on the record, preventing user2 from updating it while user1 is thinking ...
or out to lunch!

Good luck!

Regards

Jeff Boyce
Microsoft Office/Access MVP