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Externalized forms?

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by zalanmeggyesi

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Hi,

My question is this: Is it possible to get a form out of Access, and maybe give it a standalone application so that the form could be used to access a back-end database without starting Access itself?

Also, am I right that a database can be made multi-user by splitting it into front/back-ends, and having several front-ends access a single back-end; and that's it, no other coding/special software/etc required?

Thanks in advance for your response.

4 replies

by tony hopkinson

Which converted an access 'application' into a standalone exe.

Depends on what you mean by multi user, if you mean , not many people not doing much with very little data, then access lets you put the mdb file on a network drive.

It's notoriously bad at multi user, even if you get round the locking, transaction and performance issues, it has a had habit of corrupting the MDB, also most of the database management functions (e.g. user management, compaction... require you to tip every body out and gain exclusive access.

In my experinece over 10 simultaneous users or over a 100 meg of data, or the potential to do so, use a barge pole to move it right out of your way.
Unless you are coding a web app and using an MDB as a backend. Somebody on here said he could get fifty people 'connected', course that's all controlled by the backend data access layer.

You would be bettter to use a proper client server database, SQL Express 2005 for instance and then link the forms to it.

Access is a desktop designed for power users, doing adhoc stuff and things like your home CD collection.
Getting round it's limitations means coding in a fully fledged language and if your are going to that you might as well use a full RDBMS anyway.

by zalanmeggyesi

Thanks for your speedy and throrough advice!

Since you're pretty knowledgeable in this area, I would like to ask for your opinion, if you please...

I was thinking in access as the clients will need to do regular reports, and since I'm a beginner in this area of databases.

Ok, so this would be the setup: a maximum a 10 users at most, more likely only one at a time, but multiuser just in case... the database isn't too large, only ~5-7 columns, but evetually will have many many records.

The backend MDB would be placed on a network drive, with the frontend distributed to the users. From here, once the frontend is pointed in the right direction, it should handle record locking, sharing the data, etc., without any more configuration from my part, right?

So, what's the verdict? Shall I stay with Access, or switch to something else?

by tony hopkinson

Note, when thinking multi user, the number of interest is the amount of concurrent hits to same data (or page of data)

From the sound of it this isn't an issue in your case, so aside from using the toolkit or buying tens copies of access, it should be a goer.

The number of records should be OK into the 100,000s. Don't try it with millions.

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