Database Distribution Issues

[nosferatu26]

Hello,

I have been developing an .accdb database for a while now and it's ready to be distributed to other users. I have split it into its front and back ends, and it is located on a shared network drive for everyone to use. I changed my front end to .accde to avoid access to code/design views. After testing this, it seems fine whenever I open the database front end. After getting someone else to open the front end on their computer, it opens in read only, and they cannot make any changes to the back end. I'm not sure what else I need to do. I just want multiple people to have local front end copies that all synch up to the same back end, so everyone can edit data without violating any data integrity. I just don't want the users to be able to edit any of the forms or code.

If anyone can help shed some light on this for me, I'd greatly appreciate it.

Kind regards

 

[Tieval]

The back-end should be on the shared network drive and a copy of the front end on each of the local machines. You cannot put the front end on the shared drive and just open it from a machine.

 

[nosferatu26]

Yeah it turns out that the users weren't added to the permissions of the shared drive folder. I had to go in and manually add them and give them write access. Once I did that then one user who tested it for me was actually able to just open the front end from the drive and add/modify data without error.

Thank you for your quick response.

 

[Tieval]

That makes sense but it is still not best practice.

You really should have the front end on the local machine and the back end on the shared drive and distribute a copy of the front end to each user for their machine.

This will work much better (you are not opening all the forms over the network), just loading the data but also it gives you the option to give different users different front ends with less capabilities.

 

[nosferatu26]

Yeah I was just doing that to test if it was working or not. When I distribute it to everyone officially I plan to do it via email with an attachment of the front end for them to install locally.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

One thing I did for the specific case of not letting users directly open the FE file that is on the shared server: The linked tables from an Access BE have a property you can use - the .Connect property (for a DAO database) - to get its path. You can ALSO get your FE path using CurrentDB.Name, and thus with a little bit of string comparison, you could get your opening form to test these two items.

That is, pick any BE table and get its path, removing the name and type fields. Then get the FE path, again removing the name and type fields. If the two strings are the same then block the FE from opening. You can do that from the Form_Open routine of the opening form by returning Cancel = 1. If you run that test later than the Form_Open routine, you are too late because the database WILL open if you let it get past the barrier of the Form_Open code.