Networking a single user VB6 Application (using ACCESS database)

[cillawykes]

Can anyone give me any hints on how I would go about converting a single-user VB project (using an MS Access database) into a networkable system?

Is it simply a matter of locking records (or recordsets) each time they are accessed?

I'm sure this can't be too much of a complicated problem. Any help and hints are greatly appreciated

 

[mohmehran]

This depends on your special case. For example are the Database server and the client on a LAN, WAN or the Internet? How many users will be using your system concurrently? How much transaction do you have? What is the size of your database? and etc. As you said, it may be as simple as sharing an .mdb file, to incorporating complex multiple tiers for business login and data access. So it depends what you are going to implement.

Can you give more info on your case?

 

[hirick]

1) Make sure security is enabled, and every user is logging in separately. Access sometimes gets weird when there are multiple users with the same ID. They all need to point at the same security database (system.mda), so make sure it's on the server. You can set the MDA either with the workgroup administrator or on the command line -- see the documentation.
2) Optimistic locking is automatic; you can choose a more stringent form if you need to. As records are always added to the end of a page, you may have contention problems if 2 users are adding records to the same table at the same time.
3) As Mohmehran says, Access is a problem if you have lots of users. 5-20 users with a moderate-sized database is not a problem.

Holly