Printing a report to pdf in a multiuser environnement

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Microsoft

Hi, I want to automate some printing job with the pdf writer. We have a
module that manage opening the sepecified report and printing it. In that
module we also included a suggestion that we saw on the net for automatic
printing with pdf Writer. What we do is changing some registry values to
specify the name of the document (*.pdf) to be printed.

Our problem here is because we are in a multiuser environnement (our
database is resquested by more than one person in the same time), we have
problems. While someone writes to the registry another is deleting th key
and then when it's time for printing job to the one that thinks its registry
is set for automatic printing, it's in fact deleted by the other one that
just finished is printing job... Result: the registy is well set for some
users and for others, it's not...

Does someone have an alternative or a solution?
Thanks in advance!

//JF
 
Your description doesn't make sense. While you might have multiple users
using the database at the same time, each user has his/her own registry.
Registry updates are unique to the user: they shouldn't be impacting other
users.

As well, be aware that best practices are to split your application into a
front-end (containing the queries, forms, reports, macros and modules),
linked to a back-end (containing the tables). Only the back-end should be on
the server: each user should have his/her own copy of the front-end,
preferably on their hard drive (as opposed to on the server).
 
Sorry about that, I should have give more context...

There is the situation:
We wants to use access as a kind of a print server. The database would be on
a RPC server (Remote Process Control) wich would be configurated with the
PDF Writer. That's only on this server that we do the neccessary changes to
the registry to automate the printing jobs. So everyone access that same
database on the server and manipulate the same registry (wich is by
occurence the server's registry)

Sorry again about this and thanks for the quick reply!
//JF
 
Douglas, thanks for saying but in fact, even if sounds funny (I know that
lots of people doesn't like microsoft and don't trhust them when it comes to
server and networking) it is the best report engine so far we've seen. It
alows you to do as many sub-report as you want without having big major
problems (we've already tried crystal report by the way). So that's why we
want it to work as a print server...

//JF
 
I agree that Access has a great report engine. However, it isn't intended to
be used on a server in the way that you're describing. In fact, it's
extremely unusual to install any part of Office on a server.
 
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