Controlling concurrent users

[Modica82]

Hi all,

My company has a access application that is distributed locally to all machines (MDE is distibuted not MDB) when the users log into their machines.

Not sure that this is the best approach, i am unsure of the benefits of this compared to having the system on the network and have everyone access that as apposed to it being local, but it works, but if anyone has any suggestions on that, i would be willing to listen.

Anyway that is not my question. this application is being sold to other similar companies, but we need to introduce a system where we can control the number of concurrent users so that we can control a set number of licences for each company. For instance, if they have bought 5 licences, they can only have 5 concurrent users.

I have some issues, primarily becuase the system is downloaded locally i am unsure how i can go about this. I was thinking of adding a "LoggedOn" flag to the users table, and also a "ComputerName" column so i could mark the user as logged on and take a note of the machine that they are working on. Then based on the number of licences i could control who can log in and when the number of concurrent users is greater then the licences bought then i could stop logins.

This is not very secure, and anyone could just go into the sql tables and remove my flags so it really is not the best solution, but i really cant think of anything else.

Does anyone else have any more ideas?

Thanks,

Rob

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http://www.thatssolastseason.co.uk

 

[psemianonymous]

There are ways to find out how many users are currently logged on (google for "LDBUsers" or maybe "LDBUser"), but I recommend you don't bother trying. Honestly.

 

[Modica82]

pseale, thanks for the reply but i coudnt use that approach anyway, the files are local to each computer
so monitoring who is on the LDB is not really going to work.

Any ideas?

Rob

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http://www.thatssolastseason.co.uk

 

[Ed2020]

Modica,

The LDB file is not a completely accurate way of determining who is in the database anyway, as it isn't always up to date.

One way would be to create your own system that logs user's activity in a table and prevents more than five accessing the system at the same time (if you can find an FTP site I'd be happy to send mine to you).

Alternatively you may want to have a look at the following property:

CurrentProject.Connection.Properties("Jet OLEDB:Connection Control")

BTW - My personal view on frontend/backend systems is that the frontend should be stored on the local drive and the backend on the network share. This means forms/reports/code etc do not have to be opened over the network - only the data. This does mean more administration around ensuring all users have the most up to date version of the frontend though.....

Ed Metcalfe.

Please do not feed the trolls.....

 

[psemianonymous]

If each person is running their own database, then you have to do the traditional shrinkwrap security scheme. You will have to do nothing short of a license key infrastructure...this is too big.

There are lots of programs that rely on the honor system. Depending on how much time you have to spare, I'd recommend you conserve your time and not bother. This will be even harder to implement than the simpler "LDBUsers" solution.