Database for two offices 2

[petermeachem]

Currently the customer is uing Excel to track orders. Person upstairs types in the order, person downstairs packs the order and completes the row in the grid.
Problem is that persons upstairs are moving to a different town.
What's the best way to handle this.
I tried 2 Access databases, one representing the left handside of the xls for the upstairs person and the other the right hand side. The upstairs one has an autonumber and the downstairs one a long with a matching number. Join the two and display in a vb grid. When the upstairs one adds a record, insert a new one in downstairs. Post databases to and fro between offices (no internet here).

It works but it's terribly slow.

Any better ideas?

http://www.accuflight.com

http://www.lettersdirect.co.uk

http://www.ourhouseinportugal.co.uk/

 

[KenReay]

Hi

Are the two PC's connected on a LAN ?

If yes why two databases, indeed given the simple nature of the application as explained why even two tables ?

Regards

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

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

UK

 

[petermeachem]

Sorry, I didn't get notification of your reply.

They are currently in the same office on a lan, when the move takes place they will be in different towns and hence not on a lan.

http://www.accuflight.com

http://www.lettersdirect.co.uk

http://www.ourhouseinportugal.co.uk/

 

[KenReay]

Hi

Access Replication might be possible over a WAN link, have not actually tried it

Possibly use of SQL Server (or MSDE) to keep the costs down may give you the performance you need

How uptodate must the two sites be?, recording a log of changes at each end and EMailing each night, with an update routine at each site is maybe a possibility

Like the house in Portugal by the way!

Regards

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

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

UK

 

[petermeachem]

I tried Access replication once, not a happy experience. I think I'll plump for the update routine, got to make it idiot proof.

Thanks for the nice words about the house. It's slow going but we have managed to get a builder to turn up, quote next week apparently. Different sense of time over there.

http://www.accuflight.com

http://www.lettersdirect.co.uk

http://www.ourhouseinportugal.co.uk/

 

[cyberbiker]

Peter,
I have used Access replication once and it worked like a champ.

However, I used only a "One way" synchronization where the laptop version would update itself from the network.

The lap top version would look for the network connection. If it was there then it would synchronize.

I am thinking that your situation would call for the ability to do a 2 way synchronization.

From limited experience, but some experimentation and research, I believe the difficulties with Accees replication occur when the 2 versions conflict and how Access attempts to resolve the differences

I believe (and the key here is believe since I have not done this for a while) that what you need to do in your case would be to have Access select the newest modified record when there is a conflict.

Just one replicated database and one table.






Terry (cyberbiker)

 

[baderms]

Hi,

To build on Ken's idea of using e-mail. You could also have the one database, upon an order being updated, e-mail the information to the shipping person and have his database parse incoming e-mail and update his database. We are currently doing this with an app and it works quite well. We wrote a service to parse the incoming e-mail.

 

[petermeachem]

I forgot to mention, there is no Internet to the desktop in this company. One office has no Internet access at all.
Every time I mention to the boss that this would a good idea, some horrendous virus turns up and he says 'See I'm right'.

The problem I found with replication is that if (when) it goes wrong, your database will be broken and not repairable.

They will be using the (slightly slow) Royal Mail WAN (i.e. posting a CD), so I think I'll do something with update flags in the records and just run an update and append query.

http://www.accuflight.com

http://www.lettersdirect.co.uk

http://www.ourhouseinportugal.co.uk/