access transaction log

[frogboy]

first a bit of background; My company has 4 sites connected by a wan. The wan is used for real time communications and thus my IT director won't allow any files over about 25k to sent over it. To send most files we must use email or place the files in a file trasnfer system which has been designed to not interfere with the real time comms.

Now I need to give people in all 4 sites access to my Access db. I've looked at the various built in options but none seem to fit the bill as they generally use far too much bandwidth or are not designed for concurrent updates.

My solution is too create tiny log files of updates which can be transferred between sites. Record locking will be handled by the Access/VBA clients. DOes anyone have any suggestions for creating a transaction log for Access? Or any alternative solutions?

 

[BNPMike]

Access (via Jet) provides replication which is designed to deal with this situation.

 

[frogboy]

tried it. it appeared to be using sending about 2MB across the network for each synchronisation. Are you saying that Access replication can be set-up to only use the tiny amount of bandwidth I'm allowed?

 

[frogboy]

it may be that indirect synchronisation will work

 

[BNPMike]

25k??? Get a new IT director...

 

[danvlas]

Access is not meant to work on WANs. Maybe it's time for you to move on to SQL Server.

If that's not possible, try placing the Access database on an IIS web server and use ASP, that will reduce the network traffic dramatically.

But...it's a lot of work to do in both cases.

HTH



Daniel Vlas
Systems Consultant

http://www.geocities.com/danvlas/AutoMail.html

 

[MichaelRed]

IF the application is stable (no need to send the code/forms/ queries ...) across the netword, you could upsize to the ("Free") MSDE cersion of SQL server. CAREFUL planning thereafter should minimize network traffic, although I tend to agree w/ BNPMike as even MODEST recordsets would breach this limit -IF- he can determins that a recordset represents a 'file'.




MichaelRed

 

[cmmrfrds]

Check out terminal services or proprietary products such as Citrix. These allow you to run your Access app on a server and each remote PC can be a thin client which will be small bandwidth.

 

[BNPMike]

I have to say I think you are all missing the point. Replication (either with Jet or MS SQL Server) is designed to cater for this.

The issue here is you can't run a serious application involving multiple sites if your boss is living in the 19th Century. If for some obscure reason he/she can't afford a dedicated line then you could VPN across the Internet or even PSTN and cope with the required bandwith.

Too much time is wasted in IT pratting about with obscure technical solutions when there is a simple organisational solution staring everyone in the face.