Posted by: DCallaghan
on September 27, 2002 11:48 PM
I understand what you're saying. Access as an RDBMS engine in and of itself is mediocre, but as a front end to databases to be accessed on a LAN its hard to beat.
I actually had Access as a deal breaker until I scrolled further and saw the LabelMaker Pro, FoxPro, Act!, and Maximizer. If they had a SQL Server database and attached the stored procedures and views as passthrough queries and built a central repository and maybe some departmental front-ends of standard forms and reports using Access, I'd say leave it alone.
However, the main problem they're facing seems to be data being scattered all over the company with different front-ends. I'm sure that the data is duplicated and out of synch and not everyone who uses the FoxPro systems knows the Maximizer interface.
It sounded like they were an engineering shop who needs to manage clients, contacts and projects. I would imagine that by combining the data into a single location and building some fairly simple web-based front-end, they would be able to enjoy a consistent interface accessible from inside and outside the office, and also get the benfits of data integrity, consistency, and security. Their disaster recovery plan is probably a disaster and the learning curve for new employees is probably not very smooth.
This isn't a practical migration plan for this particular case: I'm only going by one e-mail. It was more of an exercise. In the same vein, going by your one e-mail, I would probably recommend moving the data from Access to a Linux database server back-end and manipulating the data on the client through Access. (Unless, of course, you're already using Access as a front end to a backoffice product) As you mentioned, using Linux is secondary to doing your job and there are no comparable Linux database front ends for analysis purposes.
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Re:That's cool
Posted by: DCallaghan on September 27, 2002 11:48 PMI actually had Access as a deal breaker until I scrolled further and saw the LabelMaker Pro, FoxPro, Act!, and Maximizer. If they had a SQL Server database and attached the stored procedures and views as passthrough queries and built a central repository and maybe some departmental front-ends of standard forms and reports using Access, I'd say leave it alone.
However, the main problem they're facing seems to be data being scattered all over the company with different front-ends. I'm sure that the data is duplicated and out of synch and not everyone who uses the FoxPro systems knows the Maximizer interface.
It sounded like they were an engineering shop who needs to manage clients, contacts and projects. I would imagine that by combining the data into a single location and building some fairly simple web-based front-end, they would be able to enjoy a consistent interface accessible from inside and outside the office, and also get the benfits of data integrity, consistency, and security. Their disaster recovery plan is probably a disaster and the learning curve for new employees is probably not very smooth.
This isn't a practical migration plan for this particular case: I'm only going by one e-mail. It was more of an exercise. In the same vein, going by your one e-mail, I would probably recommend moving the data from Access to a Linux database server back-end and manipulating the data on the client through Access. (Unless, of course, you're already using Access as a front end to a backoffice product) As you mentioned, using Linux is secondary to doing your job and there are no comparable Linux database front ends for analysis purposes.
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