Who "owns" Access databases?

[Top Spin]

I'm not sure if these are even the right questions, but...

1. Who "owns" an Access database? Say I want to write a Visual Basic
program to teach vocabulary words and I want to keep the list of words
and definitions in an Access database. Can I keep other programs from
opening that database?

2. Now suppose I want to write a little Visual Basic subfunction to be
called by the vocabulary program. Can it also access that same
database? Can it have its own separate database that the main program
does not know about of have access to?

I'm working my way through the Visual Basic and Access tutorials so
this may get answered at some point, but I'd like to understand it
better now.

Perhaps someone can point me at the proper sections of the reference
books to read.

Thanks

 

[John Nurick]

I'm not sure if these are even the right questions, but...

1. Who "owns" an Access database? Say I want to write a Visual Basic
program to teach vocabulary words and I want to keep the list of words
and definitions in an Access database. Can I keep other programs from
opening that database?

By default, anyone with a copy of Access will be able to open it, and
anyone with Microsoft Query or quite a few other programs will be able
to examine and extract the data it contains.

Setting a database password makes it a bit harder, but doesn't provide
much security. For that, you need to either implement Access user-level
security (don't try that until you're really familiar with how Access
works) or encrypt the data in your tables so only your VB program will
know what it means.

2. Now suppose I want to write a little Visual Basic subfunction to be
called by the vocabulary program. Can it also access that same
database? Can it have its own separate database that the main program
does not know about of have access to?

Either or both.

I'm working my way through the Visual Basic and Access tutorials so
this may get answered at some point, but I'd like to understand it
better now.

Perhaps someone can point me at the proper sections of the reference
books to read.

Thanks

John Nurick [Microsoft Access MVP]

Please respond in the newgroup and not by email.

 

[Top Spin]

By default, anyone with a copy of Access will be able to open it, and
anyone with Microsoft Query or quite a few other programs will be able
to examine and extract the data it contains.

Setting a database password makes it a bit harder, but doesn't provide
much security. For that, you need to either implement Access user-level
security (don't try that until you're really familiar with how Access
works) or encrypt the data in your tables so only your VB program will
know what it means.

One of the fields is a numeric sort field -- 4-byte floating point
number (Single data type). Another is a Date field (8 byte floating
point).

If I encrypt the data, will those fields still sort properly? I want
to use one of them as an index field.

Thanks