A
Alex White MCDBA MCSE
Hi,
a) yes
b) yes, Office comes with a cut down version of SQL server called the MSDE,
it is downloadable and free from MS it comes with no developer tools, and
you are expected to do all your development work within Access, or you can
purchase the developer edition of SQL server reasobly cheap, or the full SQL
version I don't know the price but it works out expensive once you start
adding CAL's (client access licences).
c) in a multi-user environment, always split the database, for performance
and reliability reasons.
Well I think you can see my view on Outlook, great as a end-user email
manager, absolutly usless as an intergrated emailing system within a
automated application. I have written several mailers that send anything
from 1 - 50,000 emails per go, for these systems to work, skip Outlook it
just does not have the mucle to do the job, writting a socket application
that communicates directly with an SMTP server is the best solution here.
Outlook 2003 is the best version of Outlook by far, I have many clients that
are running the latest version of Outlook with previous versions of Access,
one of the major problems with Outlook integration is this the data is
unstructured by design, Access on the other hand is structured data e.g.
open a table in access and every record has the same fields, this is not the
case with Outlook, each email/contact/others can have a different record
structure making life very difficult from a programming perspective.
The other problem with using Outlook is this send a large bulk email from
outlook, and your exchange server will get very upset with the workload.
Then try to find out who got the email and who did not, yes can be done but
difficult.
Your software vendor wants to charge you £65 per computer to install Office
2003 or is that price selling you a copy of the software?
So you have 11 workstations, how many servers?
what Operating System software do you have on the server(s)?
--
Regards
Alex White MCDBA MCSE
http://www.intralan.co.uk
a) yes
b) yes, Office comes with a cut down version of SQL server called the MSDE,
it is downloadable and free from MS it comes with no developer tools, and
you are expected to do all your development work within Access, or you can
purchase the developer edition of SQL server reasobly cheap, or the full SQL
version I don't know the price but it works out expensive once you start
adding CAL's (client access licences).
c) in a multi-user environment, always split the database, for performance
and reliability reasons.
Well I think you can see my view on Outlook, great as a end-user email
manager, absolutly usless as an intergrated emailing system within a
automated application. I have written several mailers that send anything
from 1 - 50,000 emails per go, for these systems to work, skip Outlook it
just does not have the mucle to do the job, writting a socket application
that communicates directly with an SMTP server is the best solution here.
Outlook 2003 is the best version of Outlook by far, I have many clients that
are running the latest version of Outlook with previous versions of Access,
one of the major problems with Outlook integration is this the data is
unstructured by design, Access on the other hand is structured data e.g.
open a table in access and every record has the same fields, this is not the
case with Outlook, each email/contact/others can have a different record
structure making life very difficult from a programming perspective.
The other problem with using Outlook is this send a large bulk email from
outlook, and your exchange server will get very upset with the workload.
Then try to find out who got the email and who did not, yes can be done but
difficult.
Your software vendor wants to charge you £65 per computer to install Office
2003 or is that price selling you a copy of the software?
So you have 11 workstations, how many servers?
what Operating System software do you have on the server(s)?
--
Regards
Alex White MCDBA MCSE
http://www.intralan.co.uk
ship said:I must confess that I am slightly out of my depth trying to follow this
tread. But am I correct is thinking the receieved wisdom so far here
is:
a) Access2000 is fine.
Anything beyond Access2000 is no faster/no more reliable and may not be
worth upgrading to (unless you need the new features)
b) For larger installations use SQL.
(not sure what this would be involved to do this - does a good enough
version of SQL come with Access? [Jet something or other??] Or are you
better to buy some other engine er "middleware"[??] - sorry to ask
dumb questions)
c) Split the database.
For increased speed and stability the database should be "split" so
that each user has a copy of all the forms locally.
Correct so far?
But what about OUTLOOK?!
We use msOutlook extensively - including to do mailshots to our
customers. (Database size c. 30K).
Outlook seems to be extremely slow to run and always has to be helped
though this process because it keeps crashing as it creates the
outgoing emails.
Aside: Outlook's search facility is absolute garbage. Slow,
counter-intuitive and without syntax!! But I get round this by using
Google Desktop which finds everything in a trice.
Personally I *hate* msOutlook with a passion. I find the entire system
particularly the menuing structures massively counter-intuitive.
Furthermore the Rules for sorting out the emails seem to have bugs in
them. (e.g. Try filtering incoming emails on contact Group!)
I also have the problem of having one machine that is already running
MS Office2002, whereas the rest of our PCs in the office (ie. c.10
machines) are still running MSOffice2000. I work part time in two
physical places, on two different PCs. So I simply copy my entire
"mailbox.pst" file from one machine to another (using an iPod FWIW!).
This more or less works. BUT the big problem is that the RULES always
seem to get corrupted whenever I copy between two machines and have to
be re-entered more or less from scratch.
So... even if MSAccess2002/2003 is not better than Access2000, I guess
we were hoping that the corresponding Outlook versions might be better.
Our local harward/software supplier want to sting us about GBP65 *per*
*PC* (!!), plus the MSAccess2003 software cost. We certainly can't
afford GBP600 for... ...essentially nothing - so forget that!
But maybe if we could install MSAccess2003 *ourselves* to save money
(or possibly MSAccess2002? to save further money), then that would be
worth doing.
The risk here is that our entire business now hinges on this ms Access
database, and if the upgrade goes wrong in anyway then
we would be in quite a lot of trouble!
==> Any thoughts?
Ship
Shiperton Henethe