Access on the Internet

  • Thread starter Thread starter Susy
  • Start date Start date
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Susy

Our company has a web page and we regularly used to post
Excel files of data for scientists to download.

Now I've created a secure database with screens for read-
only users to view and export that data to Excel. This is
a much better way to present all our data. The plan was to
post this database on our web page and let viewers export
data or view graphs. We assume that our users have Access
on their home (or work) machines and have posted a message
on the button stating that viewers must have a copy of
Access to view the data.

Now the contractor who handles our web page says that it
can't be done - Access won't work on the Internet. She
admits she knows nothing about databases. But this is why
we spent so much time and money on this large and
complicated (and useful!) database. Is there a way we can
salvage it and somehow post it on the Internet. There will
be no data entry involved. Data access pages? Split the
database? I'll learn how to do anything I have to.
Anyone???

Thanks.
 
Of course Access can serve as a backend database to the website. Silly
contractor. Or, she may have meant that it cannot be done using the
existing forms, reports, etc. in which case she is correct and should have
told you that up front.

Data Access Pages are of limited use, but since your users will have Access
on their machines, it is possible.

ASP or some other web technology may be the best way to go. Hard to tell
without knowing more about the complexity of the front-end and how much you
want the web users to see.

--
Kevin Hill
President
3NF Consulting

www.3nf-inc.com/Newsgroups
 
My WEB head tells me that you can do this. However you
need to create an ADO connection to the database. If
the .mdb file is on the webserver you can get by without a
DSN. But he suggests you put it behind a firewall and
create a system DSN on the WEB Server (an ODBC connection)
and open port 1433 (or 1434) which is the SQL Server port
through the firewall.

Good Luck!
hth
Ivan
 
Susy said:
Our company has a web page and we regularly used to post
Excel files of data for scientists to download.

Now I've created a secure database with screens for read-
only users to view and export that data to Excel. This is
a much better way to present all our data. The plan was to
post this database on our web page and let viewers export
data or view graphs. We assume that our users have Access
on their home (or work) machines and have posted a message
on the button stating that viewers must have a copy of
Access to view the data.
<snip>
Click to expand...

What data are they going to export?
Is this a large file?


If they have to have Access it is not really a web based application and it
would seem that simply downloading the mdb file might be in order.
If it is web based they should not need Access.
But they might want to do both.

Sometimes when speaking about access to Access I wish they would have given
it a different name.
 
Mike Painter is dead on!
You can have your information from your database displayed within webpages
using a number of web technologies (ASP, ColdFusion, etc.). Most large
websites are database driven (Larger sites would need SQL Server though). As
a quick and not so techincal example: A user on your site may click a
button that says "members phone numbers". This button may link to a page
named "get_mem_numbers.asp" which has code that would allow it to connect to
the database on the server and find the info based on a query. This is all
done on the server side, hopefully lighting fast. It then says "OK I've got
all the data "get_mem_numbers.asp" called for, now what do I do". Well
"get_mem_numbers.asp" also tells it on what page to display the database
info on. Let's call it "Member_Numbers.asp". This is the page the user will
see. It's the page that displays the data however you want it to look (10
records at a time, Last name first, Etc.). Dreamweaver (MX or 2004) by
Macromedia (www.macromedia.com) makes developing database sites pretty easy
for someone with a little web developing knowledge. Dreamweaver will set up
all the connections that Ivan was talking about. Check with your web host to
see what kind of database support they offer, I use ASP, it's just my
preference, but there are plenty others. Just a note, make sure they do not
place the database in www directory (just for additional security), most web
hosts don't do that, but make sure just in case.

Check out this book http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/bddwsdream/ about
building database driven sites with Dreamweaver. There are tons of books
and also lots of tutorials on the web.

If all your users need is the file, just ZIP it, upload it, give them a way
to find it, and let the downloads begin.

I'm real sorry if this was overkill and I hope it helped. Good Luck.

-Chris
 
There's already been a lot of good info posted.

If you'd like to see a couple of samples of Access (Jet) data using Active Server Page (ASP) technology, take a look at
http://www.scobiz.com/Calendar.asp and http://www.scobiz.com/ClassSchedule.asp. These pages are created on-the-fly from a Jet
database.

Jet will work for low volume situations. If you have high volume, you'll need to look into a server database like SQL Server.

--

Sco

M.L. "Sco" Scofield, MCSD, MCP, MSS, Access MVP, A+
Useful Metric Conversion #15 of 19: 5 dialogues = 1 decalogue
Miscellaneous Access and VB "stuff" at www.ScoBiz.com
 
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