Hi,

I have built a database for a company using Access 2000. The database is 
used at three different sites by about 5 - 10 users at each site. Each 
user has their own local front-end and the back-end lives on the site 
server and is about 40-50Mb in size. They are now thinking about merging 
all of the back-ends somehow. I know very little about using Access over 
the internet but I guess the front-end will no longer be much use since 
I'm not sure how it would connect to a back-end over the internet. The 
possiblity of creating an intranet (or WAN?) seems OK but apart from 
being expensive I'm not sure what the speed would be like and whether a 
potential 30 concurrent users would cause any problems. Finally they 
could synchronise the back-ends but since the files are quite large I'm 
not entirely sure how this would be done in practical terms.

Does anyone have any thoughts/ advice?

Many thanks,

Paul

I'd consider using SQL Server as your backend database...and, build a
frontend Access Project (.adp file) that all users would use.  This will
work over the internet just fine.  There are, however, some differences in
how Access Projects/SQL Server work and are build than your run of the mill
Access .mdb file.

Do a search on this list for Access Project and adp...there have been
several topics just like this one brought up.

A couple of books you might look into, if your interested...

SQL Server with Access 2000 by Rick Dobson  (Wrox Press)
>From Acces to SQL Server by Russell Sinclair (Apress)

Darin


----- Original Message -----
From: <hcb@g...>
To: "Access" <access@p...>
Sent: Wednesday, June 26, 2002 3:36 PM
Subject: [access] Internet, intranet or synchronising?


> Hi,
>
> I have built a database for a company using Access 2000. The database is
> used at three different sites by about 5 - 10 users at each site. Each
> user has their own local front-end and the back-end lives on the site
> server and is about 40-50Mb in size. They are now thinking about merging
> all of the back-ends somehow. I know very little about using Access over
> the internet but I guess the front-end will no longer be much use since
> I'm not sure how it would connect to a back-end over the internet. The
> possiblity of creating an intranet (or WAN?) seems OK but apart from
> being expensive I'm not sure what the speed would be like and whether a
> potential 30 concurrent users would cause any problems. Finally they
> could synchronise the back-ends but since the files are quite large I'm
> not entirely sure how this would be done in practical terms.
>
> Does anyone have any thoughts/ advice?
>
> Many thanks,
>
> Paul
>

Thanks for the reply! Looks like I'm finally going to have to get my head 
around SQL Server!

Paul