access and ASP.NET advise please

[phil cunningham]

I am using Access to run a database within the company and also have a
website that makes some of the information available to the general public

And so far everything is working very well

q. is there any problem using Access to do all our internal work while the
DB is exposed to the web

q. if I move to SQL server can I still use all the features of Access (VBA
reporting etc) for our internal work

I really like Access and would hate to have to do everything through ASP.NET
if I don't have to

I think I just need a little advise before I get stuck into the development
work

Any feedback will be much appreciated
Phil

 

[Steve Mauldin]

Phil,

From my experience, Access is not a database you want to run a business.
There is a lot of limitations with Access I have seen in my dealing with it
over the years. Access has all of the following problems: Limited by the
number and/or size of records, Can and will crash with little or no warning,
Recovery once you crash is problematic, Too easy for a novice user to
delete/Trash your database, Poor to non existent security. Move your data
to a more secure and recoverable database and export data to Access to do
your reporting if you have to and in the long run you'll be much better off.
If price is an issue as it often is in small businesses try using MySQL. It
has security, backup and recovery, and scheduled backups and the cost is
right for small businesses. If money is no object go to MS SQL SERVER which
is by far the best solution in my opinion. As for exposing your database to
the web, I would highly recommend that the DB be on a separate machine from
your web server and have a firewall between the two. Have the firewall
limit the access to the database machine to only hand picked ports that the
database is talking on. This will limit your exposure to being hacked. I
hope this is what you were looking for when you posted,

Steve Mauldin

 

[Brendan Reynolds]

Although the word 'Access' is frequently used as a synonym for the JET
database engine, this is one of the contexts in which it becomes important
to distinguish between the two. You can move your data from your JET
database to a server database such as SQL Server and continue to make that
data available to Access applications via ODBC-linked tables. If your Access
applications are well-designed with multi-user use in mind, this should
require minimal modification to the existing applications.

 

[sloan]

If you have a >1% chance of moving to SQL Server in the future, I would
STRONGLY recommend not using Access.

Microsoft has released something called MSDE , which is a halfway point
between Access and full featured Sql Server.
The greatest part about MSDE , is that anything you develop against it, can
be used with Sql Server.
MSDE is basically a "lite" version of SQL Server.

Check my blog
http://spaces.msn.com/members/sholliday/

12/16/2005 entry.