need help with setting up a internet database

[hansblitz]

ok well what im trying to do at the moment is to put this MS Access database i got, with a bunch of stuff on it, and i want to have it sit on an internet server so other people have access to it and can update information on it in real-time. the most import part is that i dont want them to have to download the entire database, enter data, then upload it again (mainly cause i got a very slow internet connection!).

if anyone can help, id really appreciate it.

[Cuc Tu]

You need to make a "page" in the pages module for them to enter data.

But your host also has to allow write access so the data can be entered.

[Paul Komski]

The first pre-requisite is that you will need to have a web-host that supports serving a MS-Access Database as the "back-end".

http://www.pcapps.com/Home/Services/MS_Access_On_The_Web.aspx
http://www.hostindex.com/web/webhostingnews/access_web_hosting/accesswebhosting.shtm

You then need an appropriate web-page-form as the front-end for client users to access the back-end on the server.

Other front-end/back-end combinations such as PHP and MySQL (both free) might be appropriate and would be more widely supported around the net. I'm not a fan of ASP but I believe that would be another way to utilitse a web based MS-Access database.

[yawningdog]

There are lots of ways to approach this. Paul Komsky has a good one, but it sounds a little complicated if your number of users is small.

The easiest and cheapest solution is to host the database in an RDP server account, but that means only one user can access it at a time.

Or you can host the application on a terminal server (same as an RDP server, but with licensing for an SCL or a socket) but Microsoft terminal server software can be expensive.

And of course you can host the application on a Linux machine with XRDP and have terminal services for free, albeit on an incompatible platform. But you may be able to get openoffice to run the database, I'm not sure.

Or you can tunnel the SMB shares on the host through an SSH session and just map the drive normally. Easiest if you're linux-savvy, but if you're using microsoft you're going to need an SSH server.

Let us know what you come up with.

[Paul Komski]

You can access MSAccess backends from within the OO Database Application using ODBC (http://www.openoffice.org/FAQs/ms-access/ms-access.html). At least I have done this from within Windows but never attempted it from within Linux. The OO Database frontend is so basic that it never encouraged me to use it anywhere.

I'm also not sure how one would easily use a thin client accessing via RDP if there was a lot of data to update and bearing in mind the poster had excluded downloading and uploading the whole database. If there is an easy way to do this (say using a combination of ODBC and SSH so that one could use the MSAccess frontend normally) I would be very interested.

Having HTML/PHP based frontends makes internet access very easy and completely cross platform. I would still recommend considering a PHP/MySQL based solution, noting that PHPMyAdmin makes it pretty straightforward to backup and append and edit data without uploading and downloading the whole bloat of the complete database application.

I'm sure there are many webhosts that are competitive in this area but for a pretty basic package all of this can be setup from Netfirms (http://www.netfirms.com/web-hosting/web-hosting-plus/web-hosting-plus-specs/) with minimal complexity for the user. If one is using MSAccess "at home" then it is also relatively easy to copy and modify the SQL statements from MSAccess Queries and then utilise them directly in the MySQL database.

PS
MSOffice including MSAccess can be installed on Linux boxes under WINE and seems to work very well. I have found installing into pure WINE bottles not that easy but found it a cinch with CodeWeavers CrossOver Linux (http://www.codeweavers.com/).