Does Access Support Concurrent Users?

External Since: Oct 04, 2009 Posts: 2

Hi everyone

I am trying to help a friend create a new work flow for his office. I would
like to build him a custom application that he and his employees can use to
access and manage their data. My question relates to how concurrent users
would access an Access database?

I was thinking of a creating an Access file that had data about their
customers, as well as internal links to other documents of the clients, a
main menu switchboard as a starting place, forms and reports, and automation.
I would then store this application (is it just an Access file) on the
office's server, and each employee could open the file and work from it.
What happens when all 5 employees are working from the file at once? what
happens if one person alters or creates data in the file? Can i restrict
some parts of the application to certain users? thanks a lot for any help.
Windows and Office is foreign ground for me.

External Since: Sep 21, 2009 Posts: 6

Here's a response to the first question...

Out of the box, Access is designed to support multiple users.

However, having everyone trying to 'hit' the same file on the network at the
same time is almost surely guaranteed to result, sooner or later, in
corruption, and will degrade network performance and make
maintenance/upgrade difficult.

Instead, the common approach to building Access applications is to put all
the data in one Access database, out on your network. The rest (forms,
queries, etc.) goes into a second Access database.

Link that second Access database to the tables/data in the one on the
network. Then put a copy of that second db on EACH user's desktop/PC.

This is called "splitting", and reduces the problems noted above.

Good luck!

--

Regards

Jeff Boyce
Microsoft Access MVP

"minofifa" <minofifa.RemoveThis@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:D8207AC1-73D0-46D8-ABC3-DB08DB94610B@microsoft.com...
> Hi everyone
>
> I am trying to help a friend create a new work flow for his office. I
> would
> like to build him a custom application that he and his employees can use
> to
> access and manage their data. My question relates to how concurrent users
> would access an Access database?
>
> I was thinking of a creating an Access file that had data about their
> customers, as well as internal links to other documents of the clients, a
> main menu switchboard as a starting place, forms and reports, and
> automation.
> I would then store this application (is it just an Access file) on the
> office's server, and each employee could open the file and work from it.
> What happens when all 5 employees are working from the file at once? what
> happens if one person alters or creates data in the file? Can i restrict
> some parts of the application to certain users? thanks a lot for any
> help.
> Windows and Office is foreign ground for me.
>
>