Access Space

[simon4amiee]

Afternoon all, I dont know if i am in the right area so apologies, I am starting a new job next weeks as an Analyst for the NHS, and I asked then to send me some infomation because Ive been off work through redundancy for 6 months and am bored out my brains. The information I understood, but I suspect something can be done about the following statement, I suspect advanced access users would understand this, but I may be barking up the wrong tree!

"Occasionally due to network problems Infocom is unavailable. This means the IPCNs are unable to follow up new admissions and all additions/discharges to the team workload must be done manually.

Unfortunately because of the workload a manual system is unsustainable and also leads to repetition and inefficiency and is highly detrimental to the information quality.


Possible solutions:

Even with data type conversions at the moment our data table is over twice the recommended size for a shared access database. We also have over the recommended users for a multi user database, this seriously limits efficiency and can effect our connection to Infocom.

Move the store to a specialised server and change the Infection Prevention and Control data store from Microsoft Access to a more appropriate format"

 

[mvester]

You have been handed a real mess. Access does not scale. I found that it will work with 5 or 6 users and a modest size database. The port over to something that can do the job is going to be painful for you and all the users.

The network problems are not yours. All I can suggest is when the network goes down and the users are up in arms, let them know who they can send their complaints to. I keep a list in my desk, just in case.

 

[SOS]

You might be good to move the data to SQL Server and then still use an Access frontend. Access can be a great frontend for a SQL Server backend. One of the other things that they may not have done, which is necessary, is to split the database and put a copy of the frontend on EACH user's computer. When I went to work for a large healthcare company they were having problems with their Access databases and then I found out that they were trying to run 100 people from a shared Access frontend on the server. When I changed them over to having it on each person's desktop, they quit having problems.

Bob Larson built a tool for them to enable "auto-updating" of frontends so that they would never have to install the frontend on the users' machines after the first install. All that was necessary was for them to make changes to the frontend (in the master location) and then change the version number and then the next time the user would open their frontend it would tell them that it was out of date, close, delete the old file, copy the new one over, and then automatically restart the program for them.

You can find it here (free):
http://www.btabdevelopment.com/main/MyFreeAccessTools/tabid/78/Default.aspx

 

[simon4amiee]

sounds good advice I just want to make my mark, I am only a starting analyst, but I ose these forums and many others to get top quality information to assist in my job, many thanks