Access and Dropbox (or similar) - any experience?

[spikepl]

Has anyone had any experience in sharing an Access backend through Dropbox?

I could imagine that with some restrictions it could be a viable proposition. Or not?

 

[wrmosca]

Has anyone had any experience in sharing an Access backend through Dropbox?

I could imagine that with some restrictions it could be a viable proposition. Or not?

I can see some pitfalls with that setup. For one thing, it appears only the owner of the folder can sync to it. Therefore, whatever changes someone else makes to the loacl BE will not be sync'ed to the DropBox file.

Even if the BE is read-only for the other users, they would have to download the file every time they wanted to read the data. It would only be a snapshot of the data since you might be changing it right after they download.

 

[ChrisO]

Bill seems to know what you are talking about but I’m reasonably certain I don’t.

What exactly do you mean by; sharing an Access backend through Dropbox?

Chris.

 

[wrmosca]

Hey Chris

Hope all is well with you.

DropBox is a file backup/sharing site. My impression was that Spike wanted to use it as a means of a multi-user database. But I don't see it as being possible since only one person (the owner) can update the BE.

 

[ChrisO]

G’day Bill.

Yes, doing well, hope you are too.

Thanks for the information, I should have Googled for it but for some reason was thinking of Combo Boxes.

Regards,
Chris.

 

[exebat]

It is not practical because only one user can open the db at a time.

If you and some other user have db open at the same time, you get two different databases and not a merged one.

It only works if only one user wants to open it from different locations at different times.

 

[spikepl]

Thanks for all the inputs. I have somewhere read about "somebodies" share a whole Access-DB via Dropbox. Of course everyone works temporarily on own copy, but if read only is required, it might still be OK. I was just wandering what happens if /or Dropbox attempts to start syncing after someone else made changes, and the db is open.

The idea was of course to have a simple very limited tool for sharing, without VPN or other measures that are beyond a huge number of users.

But it seems it might not be the way to go.

 

[Pelerin13]

i think the easy way to go is PHP and MySQL
good luck