[Phpwm] Accessing an MS Access DB remotely.

[Elliot Smith]

David Goodwin wrote:
>
> I'd 'second' that; Access really doesn't behave all that well,
> especially if more than one person is trying to use it at once.
>
> Moving to use a different DB backend, but still 'Access' as the front
> end is quite trivial (from what I remember) and will save you a lot of
> grief. You can probably use MySQL for the 'backend', saving license
> fees.
>
>
> David.
>   
I resisted sticking my oar in earlier (I would never, ever use Access as 
the back-end for anything), but now that others have made a more 
reasonable case, I thought my experiences might be of interest. Too many 
times in previous jobs I wrote Access-based web applications: they are 
really hard to maintain, slow, and fall over when multiple users access 
them. Worse, I've had occasions when an Access database became corrupted 
and unusable in a multi-user environment (so make backups if you carry 
on down this road). MySQL AB (the company) actually provides a migration 
tool (from Access to MySQL) if I remember rightly; and you can use 
Access without too much trouble as a front-end to a MySQL database if 
you need to (there's an issue with needing timestamps on tables so the 
Access front-end refreshes properly when accessing MySQL via MySQL ODBC 
- or at least there was last time I used it). So, I'd get away from 
Access as soon as you can if you're planning multi-user applications.

Elliot