On Sunday 18 February 2007 00:00, Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote: > On Sat, Feb 17, 2007 at 11:09:26PM +0200, Yedidyah Bar-David wrote: > > I am not sure I understood the OP question, and neither am I sure others > > did. If you intend to use the server, as others guessed, only as a file > > server for Access, then samba will probably be just as good. If they > > intend to have few Access "clients" connect to MS SQL server, then they > > might be able to make it connect and work with MySQL, and probably > > others. I personally tried and had few users that did this, with Access > > and MySQL. Google for relevant keywords, you'll find the need plugin and > > docs. > > Access works as a local database program with it's own format databases. > If you want to share databases with Access, you really need Microsoft > SQL server which runs on a Windows server. > > Without SQL server you don't get record locking, etc. If you try to use > Access to update a database on a SAMBA share, you will end up with corrupt > data.
I am not completely sure of that. Access can access (:)) VB code, i.e. it might handle locking to tables using a regular software code the application designer created (hopefully). > > If you only have one user with write access, you can place the > Access database on a SAMBA share and you will not have any corruption > problems. You may get odd results because the read only clients will not > be notified of updates and may use cached copies of records. > > Using MYSQL as a backend to Access makes a lot of sense in a Linux > server/mixed client environment. Then you can use PHP or similar languages > on Apache web servers while Windows clients can do simple queries or > data base updates using Access. > > However adding a single Linux server with MySQL to avoid the cost or > complexity of Windows Server and M/S SQL server is IMHO money poorly > spent. In the end you will either spend as much money or more as the > license fees on a good consultant to install and maintain the Linux/MYSQL > system, or end up with nothing but headaches and lost data. I don't see it. Installing mysql is pretty much a breeze and the son can help him. Just exporting the tables from access to mysql is also very simple. Finally, using some plugin/technique (can't recall right now) you just add a link to an external table in the table list. Thus, there is no need to change the application for that. The REAL problem is inside the application itself. If the program needs a transaction support in a multi-user environment then there is a need to change the application logic itself worst case or at the easy case just add a start/end transaction clauses where needed. If we are talking ms sql server, then first you need to export the tables to mysql. However, if there are stored procedures/triggers the complexity is increased. If not, then it's very easy to do. In addition, you'd better hope the application designer did not use ms sql server specific optional sql commands like transactions with special syntax and options setting using sql. > > Geoff. -- Regards, Tzahi. -- Tzahi Fadida Blog: http://tzahi.blogsite.org | Home Site: http://tzahi.webhop.info WARNING TO SPAMMERS: see at http://members.lycos.co.uk/my2nis/spamwarning.html ================================================================To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
