Access JumpStart 2.0 | Blog

A Rapid Development Framework for Microsoft Access

This is an entire planet to explore in and of itself. There are multiple layers of sharing when it comes to creating Access databases and applications with multiple users.

Although fraught with land mines, users can use the same Access front end at the same time. This creates an interesting hybrid where each user is technically using many of the aspects of the database in memory on their local computer.

I actually maintained and developed an Access system like this for 15 years before finally giving each user their own front end. The users liked the tuning I had done to allow multiple users in the same database because this did have a unique advantage of allowing the user to run multiple sessions at the same time, so they could open different orders on different instances. This can also be achieved in a single user database by opening forms in their own instances (not using DoCmd.Open, but instead using a variable to declare as a form, set the variable to a new instance of the form and use the internal form methods to open and display it.

But nowadays, I use the method of giving each data their own front end which is pretty much the accepted norm in the community that it MUST be done that way. So having multiple users and optimizing for it is really more a discussion of table locking. And the fact is that you can have multiple back ends and multiple types of backends, like an Access file on a network share, a SQL Server, and a MySQL Server. Really anything that can be connected to via the DAO object or the ADO object.

Ok, now that I’ve whetted your appetite, I’ve got to run so I’m hitting send. But I’ll have another message to send tomorrow 🙂

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