Tanya said:
Hi Rick
Thank you for your suggestions, I am not familiar with permissions in
Access - never worried about it, having only had to create basic
db's. I have been considering what you have written and realise I
have a lot more to learn about permissions. I did a little research
today into backing up db's and replica's... This is not going to be
as easy as I had hoped.
Could you recommend a tutorial on setting this up to work on a
network with multiple users?
The database when it is completed will be a lot more complex and will
sit on a school server, where teachers will be able to access it.
Further down the road, I would like students to have limited access
to add data.
Regards
Tanya
I don't know where there are on-line tutorials. There are a lot of Access
help sites that are easily found with Google though and I'm sure many will
provide the answers you need.
First off, it is not a good idea to have multiple people simultaneously in
the same application file (the file containing queries, forms, reports,
etc.). You want to use a "split" design where there is one file containing
just tables in a shared folder on the network and multiple copies of another
file containing everything else. These "front end" files have links to the
tables in the shared "back end" file and each user installs a local copy of
one on their own hard drive. While just pointing all users to a single
monolithic file on the network is technically within the Access
specifications, real-world experience show that this leads to a lot of file
corruption problems.
As for security, I don't generally recommend the built in user level
security that Access provides (no longer supported in the new 2007 file
format). Most people wanting security fall into two categories. Those
wanting to provide guidance to cooperative users that are (mostly) ignorant
of how Access works and those requiring "real" security against users who
might actually try to do things they shouldn't.
If you need the former then the built in security is overkill in my opinion
particularly given the fact that it has a steep learning curve. The vast
majority of people who attempt ULS do it incorrectly. If you need the
latter then the built in user level security really doesn't pass muster as
there are utilities easily obtained that can crack it.
