Running Microsoft Access as a Server 1

[entaroadun]

Does anyone know of any way to run Microsoft Access as a service? I have a large Access DB (read-only data mart) that is being accessed in 2-tier by users running Access linking to those tables. Obviously, there is a lot of network traffic. Is there any way to run Access as a service locally to respond to requests from clients connecting from Access?

I am on the line of business in my org and tech has a stranglehold on tech spending. I have to keep my mart under the radar for political reasons, and tech has been completely unresponsive to LOB data needs. Senior management on the LOB side is completely cowed by the CIO. The only thing I have a license for is Access, and I am afraid to run with my MSDN SQL Server license because the compliance police will come down on me.

I have considered creating ASP pages on a local IIS instance (already a no-no) that responds to client requests via OLEDB to Access, taking the load off of the network. However, this takes away the nice Access GUI that our users want.

Any creative solutions?

 

[KenReay]

Hi

A simplistic possibility, if the database is read only (ie users cannot update) why not download a copy of the data to their local PC (say) every 24 hours,

OR

have the main db as a replica master, and on each local PC a replica 'child' and use access replication to download only the updates.

Regards

Ken Reay
Freelance Solutions Developer
Boldon Information Systems Ltd
Website needs upgrading, but for now -

http://www.kenneth.reay.btinternet.co.uk

UK

 

[BNPMike]

If you have Access you are licensed for SQL Server Desktop Edition. This will reduce your network traffic.

If there are other political reasons which prevent you using MSDE then why not look at Data Access Pages. I know nothing about these but I assume they don't transmit recordsets across the network.

 

[entaroadun]

Thanks! I didn't know about the DE license. I will check the MSFT site to see the full package.

My corp has an enterprise license for Office, which includes Access. It will take some careful teeth pulling to get a copy of that agreement. In general, do enterprise licenses for Office that include Access also include MSDE as well?

 

[entaroadun]

OK. I checked the website and realized that MSDE is free for everyone. I should have known that MSFT would have a free version of its product. Sorry I didn't check the product version page before I posted.

Thanks again.