Server/Client MS Access Issues

[JesseH]

We have ODBC connections to an AS400 which works fine. The issue is that for remote sites the ODBC retrieves the information from the AS400 over DSL and well as excuting Access over DSL. Can we set Access up to run on the server and avoid the ODBC executing on the local machine.

Any Ideas?

Thanks in Advance for the help

JesseH

 

[jrbarnett]

JesseH,

MS Access is a file based database that runs only on Win32 operating systems and all processing will take place on the local system. All data from the network is downloaded from the remote server for local processing, unless queries are set up as pass through (then only the data used is returned) - but everything else - forms, reports, macros, VBA code etc are still run locally.

If queries are set as pass through, the query must be written in the remote database's dialect of SQL (the Jet database engine will not attempt to interpret or syntax check it), and Access will pass that through to the host and return its results.

Can you set up Access to run on the server? No, for the above mentioned reason. You could set the database up though to do the brunt of the processing using pass through queries - or even write them as stored procedures and just call the stored procedures. However, what I know about AS400's (and the database engines you may run on it) can be written on a postage stamp so I can't really go into more detail without a significant amount of research.

ODBC itself is a client based specification, predominantly for Win32 systems but not completely (there are implementations for some Unixes), but the server itself doesn't care what is connecting to it, as long as it follows the database engine author's specifications.

More detailed information on ODBC is available from

http://www.microsoft.com/data

but there is a quick start guide from my website

http://www.jrbarnett.freeserve.co.uk/downloads.htm

John