I would like to set up a Relational Access Database, which would be based on a ONE-TO-Many Relationship. The amount of data I anticipate would be 50,000 or more in terms of records.

1. Does Microsoft Access have the capacity to handle such amounts of data or what is the maximum.
2. How easy,is it to protect individual tables to restrict access by anauthorised users
3. can Access to the database, be allowed to remote users over a wide area network or the internet
4. What should I do to ensure maintenance of such a huge database
5. What are some of the likely problems that I could encounter with such a huge database and what could be done to offset any of the anticipated probles


Bmulenga

__________________
Bmulenga

Here is a link to answer your capacity questions:

http://www.databasezone.com/techdocs/acclimit.html

1. 50,000 records is not really much for Access, but it depends on how deep the rows are and the data types.

2. You will want to check out some articles on Access Security, but basically it is not a very secure database, so you will want to consider going to SQL Server if the data is sensitive or there are government regulations regarding disclosure of certain kinds of data in the database.

3. Access can be used on a network if implemented properly (split with local front ends) and can be available on the internet, although it is very vulnerable to SQL injection sort of attacks, so a password protected site is best. See Access Data Access Pages. Kind of kludgey though.

4. You should maintain it. SQL Server has maintenance utilties, Access does not. Just back up the back end periodically using copy and paste basically.

5. Record locking issues, update issues, native capacity issues re: number of concurrent users (255), back end file corruption, security file corruption, compact and repair, user workstation configuration headaches, drive mappings, etc. Upsize to SQL Server.

HTH

mmcdonal

Oh, I forgot to mention, you can also use multiple back end databases for one front end, and that effectively allows you to increase the size of the database as large as you want, thus overriding the 2GB file size limit. This is also an option for limiting users to certain tables. Keep the more sensitive tables in other back ends, and don't hook up the user unless they have the proper access rights. There are work arounds.

HTH

mmcdonal