Max Users and their Activities (1 Viewer)

[monkeytunes]

After poking around the forums and looking in Access help under "specifications", I see our pals in Redmond say that Access can handle 255 concurrent users. (I spit out my soda with a chuckle.)

After poking around some more, I see that the consensus is that Access will begin to choke depending on what those users are doing, alongside how much data is being pushed and pulled around.

Here's a bit of back and forth for you all...

1. My supervisors told me they want a database that can be viewed by up to 80 users (the odds of 80 people using it concurrently are slim to none, but not impossible...). Then they told me it should be accessible across the country, by users in branch offices. I said: "We need an Oracle/DB2/IIS/SQL backend. Access might work as a front end for this, but we need a big enterprise RDMBS."

2. My supervisors told me that, okay, instead of 80 full blown users, let's make it, like, 10 to 12 users that would actually be inputting data, and the others just need to view it. I said "That's a bit more feasible, but a national reach is probably more than Access, a fileserver at heart, can handle. Maybe Access with a frontend built from ASP...but probably still a big RDMBS would work best."

How accurate were my rebuttals?

 

[ReAn]

Two (three?) routes you can go:

1) Like you said, ASP frontend with Access BE (Good, but lacking: for webpages are tedious to make, and also limited in thier flexability in relation to forms.

2) Build an SQL/Oracle/Whatever server and put it up on company Intranet (or securely on the internet if you dont have an intranet.) Next, build an Access Front end that automatically configures a system dsn to connect to the server and refreshes all the links in the tables.

a) Access data directly, (can become cumbersome and slow).

b) Access data indirectly: At the start, dump all data down to local db (much quicker than trying to toy with data live over the internet. Next build temp tables to hold all the changes (then have an upload changes button that applys all the changes in bulk to the sql server.

 

[monkeytunes]

Thanks for the tips, ReAn. This was one of those cases where management said "Build us a database for our team!" and I said "Okay, give me two weeks!" and then yesterday at 5, as I showed them a prototype for the look and feel, they said "Oh, about these business rules you wrote up, they look great and all...but it needs to be used by 80 people around the continent."

W-w-whut?!

So now I'm scrambling to come up with answers/reasons/justifications for one of the vice presidents later this morning.

Although, if I spin it correctly, maybe this will finally get a copy of Oracle development tools on my desktop for me to play with...

 

[KenHigg]

May we assume by considering Oracle, that your 'reeeely biiiig' co. is not in the software business? Then you must be.....

aviation?


kh

 

[Kevin_S]

monkey -

ReAn gave you some options but, personally, if your talking 80 users across the continent then your talking a web FE with a large RDBMS as the BE plain and simple... I would not touch this project with Access if you paid me... Go with ASP/ASP.NET and SQL Server/Oracle... This is, IMHO, the only option....

HTH,
kev

 

[KenHigg]

Just a word of caution - If you have never done any object oriented programming or sql code, just vba type stuff and MS Access, you're going to be in for quite a significant learning curve with .asp, oracle dev stuff, etc. What would be great is if you can find a db sever like Oracle already running somewhere in the company and let them host/admin that side, or at least help you with the complex stuff. I mean, Oracle offers a certification just to admin their stuff, think it's going to be easy?

But, this does sound like a good project to cut your teeth on. Non-mission critical for the company...

Keep us posted... Never know when I may want to give it a try.

kh

 

[The_Doc_Man]

I think I'm going to just add my vote for a different structure than "pure" Access. Maybe SQL server can handle it cheaper than ORACLE. (Shoot, I could start with an ABACUS and end up with something cheaper than ORACLE no matter HOW many person-hours the project consumed...)

Whatever you do, watch out for the licensing fees for the ODBC modules for your field-user machines. That'll trip you up every time.

 

[Kevin_S]

Good Point Ken/Doc

Monkey - Do you have an IT section to your company? Are you the IT Section? I only ask because something like this application you are talking about is going to require some pretty heavy machinery - Your talking (potentially) a DB server running Oracle/SQL Server (I'd go SQL Server cuz I've worked on both and I prefer SQL + $$$) A server running IIS/Windows Server 2x, etc... I would assume that a company the size of yours (as you have illustated in the past ) would probably have (1) a website & (2) an IT group that probably would frown on sections/departments buying enterprise grade software/hardware and connecting to the internet... just my opinion but with the way viruses are now a days its a pretty guarded arena - heck I work at the state gov. level and you basically need a blood test to get access to servers outside the DMZ....

Basically what I'm saying is that you are talking about a significant investment (see Doc's comments regarding seat licenses) and scope - you may want to bounce this of your IT dept to get their input first - unless, again, your the IT dept then I'd start learning server administration ASAP because this is a real involved process - as Ken pointed out...

Good Luck and let us know the progress!

Kev

 

[The_Doc_Man]

heck I work at the state gov. level and you basically need a blood test to get access to servers outside the DMZ....

With Dept. of Defense, you have to put your firstborn in hock.

 

[monkeytunes]

May we assume by considering Oracle, that your 'reeeely biiiig' co. is not in the software business? Then you must be.....

aviation?

Good guess, but no, my reeeeelly beeeeg company isn't Boeing.

To answer some other questions:

My company actually has several tiers of IT, depending on which sectors are being served. There's an enterprise level IT which serves the whole company, then there are group IT levels, and then there's folks like me, who are assigned to core teams with specialized tasks. Pretty much all I do for my core team is build database after database - sometimes it's a "one-shot" database where I don't have time or need to normalize anything, I'm just comparing data from disparate sources so we can get a Bigger Picture, and sometimes it's Access apps for our entire team to use for projects, contracts and costs analysis over time.

So one of the other core teams saw what I'd put in place, and requested to have me build some stuff for them. When I wrote out the business rules (a la KenHigg's suggestions from awhile ago - thanks!), suddenly what I'd been told and what they expected came into sharp contrast.

In any event - I just pitched my take on this Nationwide Access DB to my manager, and we both had a hearty laugh, and I told him most of what was posted here by ReAn, KevinS, KenHigg and Doc as options and what would be required in terms of learning curve, manpower, etc. - the plan of attack has drastically changed at the lowest protocol level (i.e. from 80 nationwide users to 6 or 7 local users), and I can go back to being a happy-go-lucky monkey.

That being said...I'd still love to get a set of Oracle dev tools on my desktop, just to see what Larry Ellison's fuss is all about.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

I'd still love to get a set of Oracle dev tools on my desktop, just to see what Larry Ellison's fuss is all about.

Larry Ellison's fuss is all about him being less wealthy, famous, and respected than Bill Gates, but not lacking in the ego department.

 

[Kevin_S]

With Dept. of Defense, you have to put your firstborn in hock.

With the DoD I'm surprised thats all (I think the expression arm & a leg would apply literally here)

Kev

 

[KenHigg]

I sort of sensed this would happen...

Our pseudo rule around here is that if it crosses dept lines, it goes up to the I.T. folks...

You never know, if a dir or vp see's your local stuff they may pick it up and expand it as larger objective, give it to you and off you go...

kh