by Ajay Askoolum » July 24th, 2008, 3:16 pm
Hi Garth,
Glad to hear that some of the solutions were appropriate.
There is some latency with the .LDB file that may get in the way now and then; that is a Microsoft 'design feature' beyond the control of the APL+Win environment.
I would strongly recommend that you move the Access databases to SQL Server Express, for the following reasons:
1.SQL Server Express is free, offers a 4GB limit on database sizes and is much better at handling concurrent usage than Access.
2. Management Studio is also a free download that provides all the database management tools that you might want, including the defragmentation of tables and indices whilst the database is in use.
3. You can backup the database while it is in use; but you'd need exclusive access to restore it to a previous state from a backup.
4. Access is excellent in that it gives you a GUI for interrogating/maintaining the data tables and queries.
5. You lose nothing: the same Access GUI can hookup to the SQL Server database and you you have identical facilities-even the SQL dialect within Access changes automatically to SQL Server. You suddenly find that the SQL Server Books on line documentation (free download) apply within the Access GUI. I am tallking about Access Data Projects (uses extension ADP instead of MDB).
6. You can maintain your constraints, triggers and stored procedures for the SQL Server database from within Access (natively, Access does not support triggers or stored procedures for MDB files--only for ADP files).
7. You have a choice of whether to use the Access drivers/OLE DB providers and hookup to the Access ADP or use native clients to hookup diectly to the SQL Server database.
8. There are free tools for upgrading Access MDB files to SQL Server.
APL+Win is equally at home using MDB or SQL server databases.