Need help - trans-Atlantic Access

K

KGF

My company has an office in Europe and we use an Access database to generate
an employee phone extension list. we maintain our DB an they maintain
theirs. I currently have a link to their database in ours so that any
employee can print an accurate and up-to-date list. The list is a link on an
intranet website that connects to an Access report. Problem is the latency
in our WAN causes it to take over a minute for the DB's to talk and a report
to run. I'm thinking that a Data Page would have the same problem. I am
experimenting now with a little VB app that will run a snapshot each night
and copy it locally, but that has its own problem I won;t get int here. Any
suggestions on how to approach this?
 
J

John Vinson

My company has an office in Europe and we use an Access database to generate
an employee phone extension list. we maintain our DB an they maintain
theirs. I currently have a link to their database in ours so that any
employee can print an accurate and up-to-date list. The list is a link on an
intranet website that connects to an Access report. Problem is the latency
in our WAN causes it to take over a minute for the DB's to talk and a report
to run. I'm thinking that a Data Page would have the same problem. I am
experimenting now with a little VB app that will run a snapshot each night
and copy it locally, but that has its own problem I won;t get int here. Any
suggestions on how to approach this?
Click to expand...

Internet Replication is one possibility, though it's going to be poky
too.

Replication is a complex feature, and you need to get the directions
and do it carefully. There's a FAQ at http://www.trigeminal.com and a
Replication Whitepaper at http://support.microsoft.com - you'll need
to search in both, I don't have the links handy. ah yes - here's one:

http://support.microsoft.com?id=282977

Study it carefully, and KEEP A BACXUP - replicating a database creates
many new tables and new fields, changes all your Autonumbers to random
rather than increment, and more.

John W. Vinson[MVP]
 
A

Albert D.Kallal

I think the solution would be to get them to send you a updated list each
day.

In fact, why not just have those overseas folks generate the html report and
send that to you? ms-access has html report options. Just generate the HTML
page, and post that page to the web server, and you are done. Even better,
do they have a web server over there that they can post the html page to ?

However, if you got more then just a simple list, or have some types of
prompts for parameters, then likely your best bet is to create some ASP
pages, and then post the mdb file to the web server on a daily basis. That
means that you folks on a daily bases post a mdb file, and so do they. This
mdb file would not be your application, but just the full table with the
names in it (likely only one table would be in this mdb). I don't know what
kind of web server you have, but you don't have to install ms-access on the
server to allow the web server to read mdb files. Using ASP pages does sound
reasonable here.

Keep in mind that the wan is about 100 times slower then your local office
LAN. I actually surprised you can get things to work in a minute time frame.

I talk about performance, and using WANS here:
http://www.members.shaw.ca/AlbertKallal//Wan/Wans.html

The above also explains how to use ms-access applications remotely. So,
perhaps, you might consider a thin client solution, and then ALL of the data
an application will remain on your system.
 
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