Personal MS Access server?
 

Hi,

A friend asked me wether he could "share a database" between 2 pc's.
He's got a database in Access, and he has MS office XP Professional installed (IIRC). He wants to be able to edit the database 'simultaneously' from 2 locations.

I don't use MS office, so I can't check, but is there any way to serve the Access database to clients with that setup, or does he need extra software?

thanx for any tips!

the access file is nothing more than a file in the setup you described. Yes you can edit the file in 2 locations but if your making any change other than database related you will encounter the old who saved last wins scenario.

Exactly, and since the 2 clients cannot practically be synchronized, he will need some type of (sql?) server to handle table locking etc.

Any idea as to what the easiest way would be?
(I'm also thinking: it could be possible to use a locking file that shows who's editing. If the file exists the other is editing, and the client needs to wait. The file dissappears and the client can edit the database..... a mutex aproach
But I'd rather have a more elegant solution)

I don't have an exact answer for you but the Access database can be accessed by multiple users at once. You may need to set an instruction in Access to perform record-level locking instead of table-level - I'm not sure what the default is.

Do a Google search for "multiuser access" and you'll find some advice. If this is an important database I recommend splitting the code from the tables as one of the articles explains. I support an Access database where everything is in one MDB file and it's tedious when I need to make changes, however it's used concurrently by 3-4 users just fine.

Thanx a lot, this was the kind of answer I was looking for!

I'll check into that...