BE on internet

[StuJol]

what is the possibility of putting the be on the internet?

Im thinking of putting my frontend on several PC's at different locations
and then the Backend on the website so the database can be accessed from
different locations.

Is their any known issues with doing this?

If so, when linking tables from your BE to your FE, how would you tell your
FE the BE is on a server?

 

[Rick Brandt]

what is the possibility of putting the be on the internet?

Im thinking of putting my frontend on several PC's at different
locations and then the Backend on the website so the database can be
accessed from different locations.

Is their any known issues with doing this?

If so, when linking tables from your BE to your FE, how would you
tell your FE the BE is on a server?

You cannot link (in the way Access uses the term) to a file over the internet.
You need the abilty to actually open the file over the network and that can only
be done over the internet with a VPN tunnel. Even with a VPN the only
practical solution is to use that to run Terminal Services so that the entire
app (front and back end) are at the remote location so that all data traffic
stays on the remote LAN with only keyboard, mouse, and screen update data going
over the wire.

With a carefully crafted app that really takes every step to minimize data
traffic you could access a server based engine (like SQL Server) over the
internet, but unless that is also used via a VPN it is not considered a very
secure way to do it.

The best and most difficult thing to do is to create a web interface to your
data and not try to use Access.

 

[jacksonmacd]

You can't link an Access FE to a BE on the Internet.

The Blue Polar (http://www.bluepolar.com/) software claims to support
Access database via a web interface. My personal experience with the
software is a bit of experimentation, but it seems to work as claimed.

 

[StuJol]

many thanks for input, what application would you reconmend using for
creating a web interface for my access database? I hear data access pages are
difficult to work with.

 

[Tim Ferguson]

many thanks for input, what application would you reconmend using for
creating a web interface for my access database? I hear data access
pages are difficult to work with.

If you have money and/ or you are committed to Microsoft, you can use IIS
and ASP.net and SQL server. For small volumes, you can do these in Express
Editions.

If you have ambitions and/ or you need to save cash, you can use Apache and
PHP and MySQL (these work on Linux or Windows).

If you are a real masochist, you can do the whole thing in Perl and be
completely platform-independent!

Hope that helps


Tim F