Acess on SBS 2003

[gavin]

I was wondering if anybody has any experience putting an
Access database on an SBS 2003 server and running it from
clients. How does it behave? Are the changes dynamic
among the clients and server or does everything have to be
done on the server?

I know about making the file open in 'shared' mode, but
even then, I'm still having problems using the file by
multiple users, how far down/up do the file permissions
need to be set and what do they need to be set to? Right
now, the users have full control of the folder that the
database is in, but I still get the "this file can't be
opened - it's being used by another person" runaround.

Anybody? Help an Access newbie?

 

[John Nurick]

Hi Gavin,

If you've got Access installed on the workstations and the database is
an .mdb file in a shared folder on the server, there's nothing special
involved at the server level, though users need fullish permissions
(Access needs to create/modify/delete the .ldb locking information file
as well as modify the .mdb itself).

At the Access level, it's advisable to "split" the database so that the
data is in a "back end" .mdb file and all the forms, queries, etc. are
in a second "front end .mdb. The back end goes in the shared folder on
the server, but there should be a separate copy of the front end on each
workstation. Doing it this way is absolutely standard practice because
it greatly reduces the chance of file corruption when several people are
using the database at once.

Obviously when the data is in a shared file any changes to the data are
automatically available to all users. With a split database it's
possible to do development work on a copy of the front end, and when
it's working satisfactorily distribute the new version to the
workstations (there are ways of doing this automatically).