Hello,

We have and Access Project Extension (ADE). I would like to provide this ade to clients external to our organization-- about 50. I tested a CheckPoint VPN with the ade at a remote site, but the application speed was a problem. Most likely due to the remote site DSL line, encryption and distance issues.

I was wondering if anyone out there knew if Citrix would be a good option to use in a SQL Server<->ADE environment for multiple remote clients??

It seems the application speed would be better and less of a hassle updating and keeping track of the front ends.

Thanks for any input.

LH

One of my clients runs our ADE based application with more than 45 concurrent users connecting through a Citrix box. The users connect to the Citrx box via VPN connections. The performance is exceptional. Some users even connect through a 56k modem on their Notebooks and the performance is still acceptable. Citrix if you can afford the licensing is by far the best solution.

Even though Microsoft tell you “An Access project is strictly a client and has no multi-user capability.” you can still run it as a multi-user application if you are prepared to ignore the “The database DatabaseName will be opened read-only because one of the following occurred: The file is locked for editing by another user, or the file (or the folder in which it is located) is marked as read-only, or you specified that you wanted to open this file read-only.” message that Microsoft display by default when two or more users try to access the same ADP/APE file. Unfortunately there is no way to turn this message off.

If you can live with that message then updating and keeping track of front-ends is very easy. Personally I wouldn’t use this method as you can write a simply script to distribute the ADE file to the appropriate users on the Citrix box easily enough.

BTW, If you do choose to use the single APE method on a Citrix box it really hinges on you having written your application in such a way that you control the names of any temporary tables. I pass a session number that is unique to each user (generated at login time) to suffix any temporary table.

Hope this helps/answers some of your questions??
-Chris

Chris,

Thank you for the input! Yes, I would probably distribute one ADE file for each user on the Citrix box as opposed to one ADE on each remote computer... this is what you mean, right?

Also, is using a VPN the usual way users connect to the Citrix box and if so is this transparent to the user? (I really am not familiar with Citrix but I know there is an ICA Client.) I want to keep this as simple, reliable and as quick as I can for the user.

Thanks again!

LH

Yes, the best way is to have one ADE for each user. However, I was trying to explain that it is possible to only have one ADE in a common folder on the Citrix box accessible by all users. It does work, but not the recommend way to go. One ADE per user is really the way to go.

The client that I was referring to would have 45 concurrent users connecting through a Citrix box via VPN and about an additional 10-15 users locally (not going through the VPN / Citrix box).

Yes, you can make it transparent to the end user through a convoluted parameter setup.

The ICA Client is easy to use and if you have other applications that you may want the user to access then this is the way to travel & setting up printers is a lot easier!

-Chris