Tek-Tips is the largest IT community on the Internet today!

Members share and learn making Tek-Tips Forums the best source of peer-reviewed technical information on the Internet!

  • Congratulations strongm on being selected by the Tek-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!

Loading Access DB over slow WAN 1

Status
Not open for further replies.

Prathmesh

Programmer
Oct 22, 2003
21
AU
Hi All.
I recently deployed a BE-FE version of a new Access Database in my firm, after restructuring the old one which was just a standalone mdb file. We have a normal 100Mbps LAN. Its recently deployed and so far it seems to work fine. However, now my firm wants me to try out and deploy the same thing over the WAN (its in form of VPN) that they have got over their 1 other remote office. The data transfer rate is 1.5Mbps/512kbps (download, upload on the remote office side). I tried to deploy the FE at the remote office keeping the backend at the main office, but that's VERY SLOW. It takes minutes to open up forms and reports. Also, I read somewhere that in order to process queries, Access sends all the data accross to the client machine, instead of just the required data, and all the data is processed on the client side. (Well, that's the whole point of having a FE-BE structure to decrease the load on server, and make use of client machine resources, isnt it?) Now I am in a bit of a fix under two conflicting scenarios. For Local office I need a FE on client machine that does all the processing and for the remote office I need something that will do the processing on server side and just send the required data across. What do I do now? I have thoguht of some ideas which I am highlighting and would appreciate some advice on those.

1. Create a similar FE and BE on the remote office and then link the two BEs. But here also I guess the same problem will arise of ALL the data transferring back and forth during each query run or loading forms and reports.

2. I dont want to use MSSQL since it is very expensive and MSDE because it is limited to 5 users connecting at a time simultaneously. (An off-the-track question for this section, but supposedly in line with the solution) Would mySQL suffice?

3. If I use a combo of mySql and Access and use pass through queries, will it solve the problem? I am asking this because Access mgiht not be able to handle the running of multiple queries simultaneously as it will seriously mar the performance of database.

3. Is there anything else I should be looking at or I have missed? I would really welcome if there are any more suggestions, which I am sure, will be. :)

P.S. All the tables are linked and normalized. However, the company requires a lot of forms and rpeorts and hence the Front end is almost 250 MB in size. (This is just for reference).

Sorry to post such a long question, but did not want to miss out on any facts. Thanks to all in advance for taking time to answer my queries.

Regards,
Prathmesh
 
Congrats, that sounds like a much more managable size for a FE.



Alec Doughty
Doughty Consulting P/L

"Life's a competition. Play hard, but play fair"
 
Prathmesh,
There is just 1 table that holds the version information. I have done that for convinience purpose. Each time the client loads up the FE, it will check whether the client FE version is similar to the FE version on server. IF not, the new FE will be copied over to the client side. I have done this to automate the updation of changes each time the client starts the FE.

could you please share your code with me?? I am intrested in this for my current project.
maybe even write a FAQ on this one!

Thanks
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Part and Inventory Search

Sponsor

Back
Top