Sharing a Database

[Commish]

Hey Folks,

I have a real nice database application that I am pretty happy with. I
use it once a year to run my fantasy/rotisserie baseball draft. And
now, I am at the point, technologically, where I want to try and share
a few of the forms with other people at the draft - and the entire
application with one other person.

So, what is the best way to do this?

We'll be at a place where WiFi is available. My first thought was that
I could put the whole thing in my Dropbox and then split it, and allow
users permissions to see specific forms. But, according to the Dropbox
forums, Access works great on a LAN. But since Dropbox is technically
a WAN, it has sharing issues.

So, what are some thoughts of the Access people here?

 

[John W. Vinson]

Hey Folks,

I have a real nice database application that I am pretty happy with. I
use it once a year to run my fantasy/rotisserie baseball draft. And
now, I am at the point, technologically, where I want to try and share
a few of the forms with other people at the draft - and the entire
application with one other person.

So, what is the best way to do this?

We'll be at a place where WiFi is available. My first thought was that
I could put the whole thing in my Dropbox and then split it, and allow
users permissions to see specific forms. But, according to the Dropbox
forums, Access works great on a LAN. But since Dropbox is technically
a WAN, it has sharing issues.

So, what are some thoughts of the Access people here?

Running a split Access application over any sort of WiFi is a very bad idea.
Access is a very high-volume data transfer application, and having a dropped
connection during an update is all too likely to corrupt your backend
database.

If you don't need concurrent updating (i.e. one person - you? - is responsible
for updating the database and everyone else has read-only access) then you can
give the users a copy of the free A2010 Runtime (if they don't already have
Access), and a locked-down Access database with the needed forms and reports;
this could be a single unsplit database or both ends of a split database.

The alternative would be to migrate the data to SQL/Server or MySQL and
develop a web application... not a trivial task at all, and you would not be
able to use much of the work that's gone into developing the Access frontend.
--

John W. Vinson [MVP]
Microsoft's replacements for these newsgroups:
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/accessdev/
http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/addbuz/
and see also http://www.utteraccess.com

 

[Commish]

Running a split Access application over any sort of WiFi is a very bad idea.
Access is a very high-volume data transfer application, and having a dropped
connection during an update is all too likely to corrupt your backend
database.

If you don't need concurrent updating (i.e. one person - you? - is responsible
for updating the database and everyone else has read-only access) then you can
give the users a copy of the free A2010 Runtime (if they don't already have
Access), and a locked-down Access database with the needed forms and reports;
this could be a single unsplit database or both ends of a split database.

The alternative would be to migrate the data to SQL/Server or MySQL and
develop a web application... not a trivial task at all, and you would notbe
able to use much of the work that's gone into developing the Access frontend.
--

             John W. Vinson [MVP]
 Microsoft's replacements for these newsgroups:
 http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/accessdev/
 http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/addbuz/
 and see alsohttp://www.utteraccess.com

Thanks for the advice, but the database is updated throughout the day,
so, I wouldn't be able to distribute a locked down runtime version.
Ideally, I'd want the database somewhere shared - read-only to the
masses - where the users have access to a subset of forms and reports.

As for MySQL, I know enough SQL to create the needed queries, but not
sure what I would need to create read only forms and subforms, etc.
Can you suggest anything user friendly that sits on top of MySQL?

 

[Phil Hunt]

If you can create an ODBC connection to MySQL, you can link the tables to
your Access app and use your program like they are native Access tables.
(maybe with some minor exception, but you can probably get around them)

 

[Commish]

If you can create an ODBC connection to MySQL, you can link the tables to
your Access app and use your program like they are native Access tables.
(maybe with some minor exception, but you can probably get around them)

OK, I'm trying to set up the Data Service and create an ODBC
connection.... but I keep getting an error that "the setup routine
could not be loaded due to system error code 126: the specified module
could not be found"

Any help getting me around this one?

 

[Phil Hunt]

Do you know which route are you taking ?

You may need to download the MYSQL ODBC driver.

qoogle 'mysql odbc download'

If you can create an ODBC connection to MySQL, you can link the tables to
your Access app and use your program like they are native Access tables.
(maybe with some minor exception, but you can probably get around them)

OK, I'm trying to set up the Data Service and create an ODBC
connection.... but I keep getting an error that "the setup routine
could not be loaded due to system error code 126: the specified module
could not be found"

Any help getting me around this one?

 

[Commish]

Do you know which route are you taking ?

You may need to download the MYSQL ODBC driver.

qoogle 'mysql odbc download'




OK, I'm trying to set up the Data Service and create an ODBC
connection.... but I keep getting an error that "the setup routine
could not be loaded due to system error code 126: the specified module
could not be found"

Any help getting me around this one?

I was trying to create an ODBC connection to an access database - but
I'm pretty sure I've given up. That the technology to do something
quick and easy isn't available.

I won't have access to a LAN - I am setting up a fantasy baseball
draft. It is a 1 day thing in hotel conference room. I was hoping to
just find a sharing solution using something like Dropbox, or Box.com
- but Access treats them like a WAN (whihc they are) not a LAN (which
they look like).

It's not worth the effort to convert it all to MySQL and then find
(and pay) for a site to host the data, so, unless someone can suggest
a quick easy way to do this, I won't be doing it.

Thanks for all the thoughts and suggestions.

 

[John W. Vinson]

I was trying to create an ODBC connection to an access database - but
I'm pretty sure I've given up. That the technology to do something
quick and easy isn't available.

I won't have access to a LAN - I am setting up a fantasy baseball
draft. It is a 1 day thing in hotel conference room. I was hoping to
just find a sharing solution using something like Dropbox, or Box.com
- but Access treats them like a WAN (whihc they are) not a LAN (which
they look like).

Well, if you're communicating from a hotel room, WAN is all you can expect -
and usually not a very good WAN at that. I'd be reluctant to even TRY an ODBC
connection in that circumstance. You'ld do much better to use some sort of
remote-terminal connection (such as Citrix or Windows Terminal Service) to
some powered-up, working computer to connect to the Access database remotely.
--

John W. Vinson [MVP]
Microsoft's replacements for these newsgroups:
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/accessdev/
http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/addbuz/
and see also http://www.utteraccess.com