Front End / Back End and Maintenance

[Chip]

First, let me say, I have learned a tremendous amount about Access
from everyone on this board. I wanted to thank everyone because it
has taken my Access abilities to a new high and I love it.

On to my question.. I work for a company with 12 employees. I am
resonsible for maintaining several databases. I have designed two of
the databases and one was "designed for me". Needless to say the one
I didnt design is pretty bad off. We'll talk about that another time.

But for the two that I did design, I have split them into Front and
Back ends as was suggested. The back end is located on our server.
And then everyone has their own copy of the Front End. I understand
the concept of this and have noticed an increase in speed of the
databases.

Now, since were a small company, we are all at times out of the
office, but we need to be able to access the database via the
internet. Eventually I will create the web applications to access
this database, but what I have a hard time wiht, is how to edit or
work on the database from my laptop at home. I take a copy of the
front end, establish a VPN to my network, and try and access the
backend and it takes forever. I cant get access to the tables. So
how to work on the Front End (make fixes, edits, etc.) from my laptop,
without have such a long lag time.

We do have SharePoint too. Would it help if I posted the BE there?

Chip

 

[Stefan Hoffmann]

hi Chip,

I take a copy of the
front end, establish a VPN to my network, and try and access the
backend and it takes forever. I cant get access to the tables. So
how to work on the Front End (make fixes, edits, etc.) from my laptop,
without have such a long lag time.

There are a lot of things you can do to increase the speed, but you have
always the limitation of bandwith. How fast is your connection at home
and at your company?

http://www.granite.ab.ca/Access/performancefaq.htm

We do have SharePoint too. Would it help if I posted the BE there?

No, don't even consider this.

You may consider using Terminal Services. Your application is run
locally on the server and only the "screen content" is transmitted. This
is a solution which works also with slow connections around 64kbit.


mfG
--> stefan <--

 

[George Nicholson]

So, how to work on the Front End (make fixes, edits, etc.) from my laptop,
without have such a long lag time.

If you are only making changes to the frontend, simply connect to a local
copy of the backend.

I rarely do any design work while connected to live data.

 

[Albert D. Kallal]

I take a copy of the
front end, establish a VPN to my network, and try and access the
backend and it takes forever.

The reason why it takes forever is your using a connection that is 100 times
slower then your office network. I doubt I need explain too much that 100
times is quite a bit.


I explain some of your possibilities here:

http://www.members.shaw.ca/AlbertKallal//Wan/Wans.html

We do have SharePoint too. Would it help if I posted the BE there?

If you are using access 2003, or 2007, you can upload, and then "link" your
tables to SharePoint. This means that you could obtain useable performance
over a wan. So, you do not place your mdb on SharePoint, but you can link to
SharePoint "lists". Depending on how complex your application is, this is a
possible approach that can work for you (I don't mention this possibility)
in the above article...