Newbie question, how to connect remote users?

C

Charlie

I'm about two weeks into a, fairly simple, Access 2003 project to set up a
centralized database to be used by tour desks located in (3 for now) local
tourist hotels. This forum has been very eductional and helpful. At this
point I have two questions:
1) The local network experts (probably not "Access experts") have
reccomended "Terminal Server" for connecting the hotel tour desks to our
server ("MS Small Business Server"). Does this make sense? Or, should we
use some kind of VPN/Internet connection ?
2)I notice that, as the application grows, it crashes more often (or worse,
just starts misbehaving). The "compile it again, then compact it" trick seems
to work for me, BUT, would be totally unacceptable in actual use. Are Access
applications "sensitive" by nature or can we hope to resolve the crashes,
one-by-one, and eventually get to a stable environment ?

Thanks to all,
Charlie
 
D

Douglas J. Steele

Terminal Server is definitely better than VPN or Internet connection.

Access is very sensitive to network performance. You might want to read what
Albert Kallal has to say about using Access over the WAN at
http://www.attcanada.net/~kallal.msn/Wan/Wans.html (although when I went to
check that link just now, I ran into a Gateway Timeout error)

One of the most critical things is to split the application into a front-end
(containing the queries, forms, reports, macros and modules), linked to a
back-end (containing the tables). Each user should have his/her own copy of
the front-end.
 
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