Access and folders

[John Parkinson]

I have been doing a lot of preliminary work over the past
few months getting ready to do a switch over from dBaseIV
to ACCESS. All of the dbase files are located in several
different folders such as payroll, employee, vehicle
repair, inventory, purchase orders, road names (for
routes) and on and on. When I am building the ACCESS
files, I know I can link to a file in a different folder.
My question is this; when I am ready to place the ACCESS
file on another users computer can I copy all of the mdb
files and folders without causing any harm?

Thanks.

John Parkinson

 

[Albert D. Kallal]

The answer is yes, you in general can just move a mdb file to anywhere you
want.

In fact, the nice thing about a mdb file is that all the tables, indexes,
forms etc is in ONE file! Thus, all kinds of path problems, and accident
leaving behind a table, or index file like in dbase is a thing of the past.

However, as any good access developer knows, you want to at least split out
your application form your data. In other words, you should run a split mdb.

So, just like in the old dbase days, you had your data file, and you also
had your program file(s). The same concept should apply to ms-access.

There is many reasons, and MANY benefits to working with ms-access this way.

Of course, if you are linking your "front end" to the back end, and you
change the path location, then you will need to re-link. This re-linking
process can be done via the linked table manager (built in to ms-access).
Often, as a developer, we also provide some code and check for bad links at
start-up. Often, as a developer you might want to even include you own
re-linking code. There is some samples at www.mvps.org/access

So, you can assume that a folder, or a path name to a back end data file
will be relative in your linking code, but when you actually link, you MUST
USE A FULL qualified path name. That means relative path names ARE NOT
allowed when you specify the link. (you often could and no doubt assumed
relative path names in dbase).

Anyway, you really can't develop in a serious manner in ms-access until you
separate the code/application and the data. For more info on this, check
out:

http://www.granite.ab.ca/access/splitapp.htm

http://www.microsoft.com/accessdev/articles/bapp97/chapters/ba15_3.htm