Like I said I’m between a rock and a hard place. In particular, this group of people with this legacy Access app have to pay my department money to convert it. On the other hand, because our budget is so bad, there’s no money to do anything. We are not going to support Access any more. One the one hand management has made it clear that no longer Access development is to take place. NET solution is one of the major roots of my problem. The choice between continuing with Access or converting it to a. They seem to have a mixture of versions of Access. Although this is a separate issue from what I asked in the original post, I think this is a part of the problem. The problem is that on the one hand I’m told that we’re no longer going to support Access as a front-end, but then the next moment I’m told that I’ve got to do something about this (which normally means bringing someone else in who knows Access development).Įveryone has Access installed on their PC’s. NET (which I am an expert at) or have them buy some COT solution. I’d rather either scrap the whole Access front-end entirely and write it in. As was pointed out this does result in some of the users getting out of the Access application, but staying within Access to access the SQL Server tables directly. The Access database/front-end is written using Access 2007, back in the day and I’m not even sure who it was who did it. In reading over the discussion I can see how the thought as to what’s happening here has changed. Thank you all for this excellent feedback and discussing the issue. No doubt also, I imagine Citrix is not cheap I hear (on the net) there are issues with maintenance of a Citrix environment but wonder if that is just an IT thing or it does have an impact on the delivery of the database application itself. The users share the server’s physical resources and provides a “better, faster” experience for the user.
No application front end or data file sitting on the users desktop. are sent to the app on the server and a screenshot is returned from the app to the user’s desktop.
Using the accde on every user desktop will require an MS Access license on every desktop would it not? Or is there a way around that?Īdditionally I wonder if anyone can comment on an alternative to the solutions offered to the question, that being the use of Citrix Server visualisation where the data (SQL Server or accdb) and app (accde) sit on a single server and user keystrokes etc. Runtime accdr is good if you are on a budget (or more likely strike IT management resistance to investing in MS Access as a database solution!) and need to distribute to many users as the Access Runtime app is free. I was thinking more about the issues that may come up with using the accdr runtime files rather than the accde for front end.
It’s also likely to provide more efficient (faster and smoother) operation. You are absolutely correct that having each user opening a separate, local copy of the front end database is much safer. Programmers who use global variables, or any kind of persistent data, are asking for trouble. Executing an application that is installed on the server (network share) can have all sorts of problems.Īnd it can be difficult to verify that the front end is really immutable.
I hope that each of your uses has a copy of Access installed on the client computer. That said, there are a number of points to consider. As long as that rule is followed, there’s no particular danger in having everyone use the same front end. None of that is mutable – it doesn’t change during execution. In a properly designed “split database”, the front-end contains only the user interface (forms and reports) and the executable code. It’s not a good idea to run the front end from a network share, it’s not a deal-breaker.