I work for a small software company that distributes an epos system based in access 97 and vb 6, The system mainly consists of the front end in and mde and a data container in an mdb.

We are looking for a solution for when customers ask for additional reports, at present we have to create a new mde and send it out, or even visit and install it ourselves.

The idea situation would be that the report was in a single file that could be emailed and saved in a specified directory that the system could then pick up and use as another report.

Any ideas? or can someone point us in the right direction?

thanks

pOwelly,

You could have a standard, interim .MDE file in some (any) consistent
location. It would have the links to your production database's
tables and a small menu of reports/forms etc.

You could constantly replace it, evolving it until its contents were
present in the next release.

This assumes that your production software is installed in a consistent
manner on the client machines. Otherwise, they could/would have to
browse for the production database and establish the table links
dynamically.

Wayne

This would be similar to what we are doing at the moment, we would like to be able to ship the product with say 10 reports included, and have maybe another 100 available on our website for a small fee, ie £1 each, which they can download and install themselves, or if someone want something specific they can get us to write a bespoke report for them and send it to them direct.