I was told that anytime a create a database for more than 15 users, Access
is
no good becuase it become unstable and corrupts data.
Access in the hands of an expert database developer is very stable and far
cheaper than any equivalently functioning alternative. Access in the hands
of novice usually leads to numerous problems, and can become an utter
disaster. The Microsoft Access development team has admitted that the most
common cause for database corruption is sharing of a multiuser database file.
Novices build an Access database for their own use and then later share it
on the network -- without even considering splitting it into a front end and
back end or networking issues. They have huge performance hits, because the
database was pretty fast on the user's local machine so many required
database application development techniques were ignored, like normalization,
primary keys and indexes. And when the database curruption starts they blame
Access, not the lack of skills of the developer.
I've been using it for 5
years, and never had a problem.
That's because you've been doing many things correctly, whereas these
naysayers haven't. They don't know how to avoid problems which, admittedly,
takes some experience.
If a multiuser database is designed correctly with a split front end and
back end, all users are given Windows "Full control" security permissions on
the network shared directory, and all users are only reading the records,
instead of inserting, updating and deleting records, then the database could
handle more than 100 concurrent users. (The actual limit is 255, but it's
pretty hard to get close to that number.) However, real life doesn't give us
such an ideal scenario.
The number of concurrent users will be limited to the amount of network
traffic and the amount of record lock contention. The record lock contention
can be controlled to some degree by the efficiency of the database design and
database application design. This is where experienced Access database
developers are worth their weight in gold, because they can often create a
fairly robust database system with Access, instead of creating a much more
expensive database system with SQL Server, Oracle, or another RDBMS.
So, the limit on concurrent users depends upon the needs of the database
application, the amount of record lock contention, the network and how it
handles traffic, and the expertise of the database developer. This limit
could be from one user to 30 or more concurrent users in a reliable Access
database system, depending upon all of these factors.
HTH.
Gunny
See
http://www.QBuilt.com for all your database needs.
See
http://www.Access.QBuilt.com for Microsoft Access tips.
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