Access 2000 and 3-Tier?

  • Thread starter Thread starter AD
  • Start date Start date
A

AD

Does anyone know if Access 2000 can be used as a client
application in a 3-tier architecture. The company I work
for is planning to migrate data from few Access 2000
applications to an Oracle database. That should work
without any problems if Access connects directly to Oracle
(linked tables and/or ADO). But for security reasons they
don't want to allow a direct connection to Oracle, but
through the API which further connects to Oracle.
Is it possible to keep Access as a client, or even client
tier has to be rebuilt from scratch using another tool (VB
maybe, or possibly web based with ASP)?

Thanks in advance for all the answers
AD
 
I not sure using the OLEdb provider for Oracle instantly makes a 3 tier
application.


3 tier usually refers to:

1st Front end program on each pc (VB, etc)
2nd Middle tier (VB, etc). This hunk of code sites on the server..and
makes all data revivals to the 3rd tier
3rd Database Engine.

It is not 100% clear what oracle api you mean...but if you do in fact mean
the OLEdb Provider for Oracle (and not odbc), then you are still talking
about a 2tier application. If the oracle api is a library a library that
sits on the server, you kind of have 3 teir...but none of YOUR code or
BUSINESS logic or data processing routines would be written, and running on
this 2nd tier...so once again in effect, you really are only a 2 tier
application.

Regardless, if you must use the OLEdb provider for oracle, or some "api",
then ms-access is not going to be the best choice. This will effectively
mean that your forms will have to all become un-bound. Further, you can't
use the report writer at all...as it needs a odbc connection.

So, some clarification on the "api" needs to be made here. However, if you
don't have direct access to tables via ODBC, then:

** you can't use the report writer (the report writer in ms-access is
still the best in our industry right now)

** You can't even use ms-access built in query builder (no building of
queries in ms-access)

** In fact, all you got left is writing VB code to fill un-bound forms. So,
no query builder, no report writer, no bound forms, no bound combo
boxes...hum....you might as well use VB to do that.

I find it hard to believe that no word merges, no Excel or none of the
office programs (including ms-access) now will not be able to use the oracle
data? I think some serious revisions in company policy needs to be looked
at. Virtually none of the open standards (like odbc) can be used to get at
the oracle data if no "existing" industry standards can be used to grab the
data.

I also would be surprised that odbc can be turned off on oracle anyway. So,
what is going to stop users with permissions to the oracle database from
firing up Excel and executing sql queries on the data?
 
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