standalone database application

[Craig Armitage]

Hi,

If i want to make my database available to others that dont have access,
whats the recommended solution? visual basic app? some kind of web
application? how do you guys approach this?

cheers

Craig

 

[Graham Mandeno]

Hi Craig

You can get a runtime version of Access which may be freely distributed but
which cannot be used for development (design view is disabled).

The latest version (Access 2003) comes as part of Visual Studio Tools for
Office (http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/products/vsto/)

In previous versions it was known variously as the Access Developer's
Toolkit/Office Developer Edition/Access Developer Extensions.

Tony Toews has some good info on it here:
http://www.granite.ab.ca/access/developereditionversions.htm

 

[John Vinson]

Hi,

If i want to make my database available to others that dont have access,
whats the recommended solution? visual basic app? some kind of web
application? how do you guys approach this?

The simplest approach is to purchase the appropriate "Developer's
Edition": see

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

for details. This lets you create a royalty-free "runtime" version of
Access, which will let your users *use* an existing Access application
although not enable them to make any design changes to it.

A Web application can be beneficial if you really need web capability
- to have users on one computer use an application on another computer
across the internet. Access isn't suitable for this by itself (though
you can use an Access .mdb file as a data store for a web-enabled
application; SQL/Server is probably more suitable).

Rewriting the user interface from an Access app in Visual Basic or
..NET - and using either Access or SQL (or MySQL or Oracle or...) can
certainly be done, but in practice entails starting over from scratch.


John W. Vinson[MVP]

 

[Ian Craig Armitage]

Thanks John,

If i was to look at developing a web application, what tools would be
required? Just frontpage? i have a small business server running
sbs2003r2 with the Premium technologies (SQL etc).. Is this sort of thing
possible with sharepoint? from what i have read, sharepoint may not be able
to do reports / macro's etc..

Cheers

Craig

 

[John Vinson]

If i was to look at developing a web application, what tools would be
required? Just frontpage? i have a small business server running
sbs2003r2 with the Premium technologies (SQL etc).. Is this sort of thing
possible with sharepoint? from what i have read, sharepoint may not be able
to do reports / macro's etc..

Sorry, you're getting way beyond my expertise here. I'd suggest asking
on a Frontpage forum.

John W. Vinson[MVP]