Solved Possibilities Of Centralized FE For All Users OR Individual FE At Each Terminal (1 Viewer)

[Ashfaque]

Hi,

I dont know if this question was asked before or not but I need to know if a centralized Access FE copy can be used by multi-users or delivering separate copies to various terminal is the right way. The only thinking behind this we could save time in delivering and setting up FE at each pc.

Secondly, is there any limit for FEs users? I mean if let us say there are 30 users so can they open Access db same time (either centralized copy OR separately located on each pc. please note BE is on SQL Server and I hope BE will have no issue.

Please advise

 

[bob fitz]

Hi,

I dont know if this question was asked before or not but I need to know if a centralized Access FE copy can be used by multi-users or delivering separate copies to various terminal is the right way. The only thinking behind this we could save time in delivering and setting up FE at each pc.

Secondly, is there any limit for FEs users? I mean if let us say there are 30 users so can they open Access db same time (either centralized copy OR separately located on each pc. please note BE is on SQL Server and I hope BE will have no issue.

Please advise

Each user should have their own fe

 

[The_Doc_Man]

In fact, you should NEVER directly share a front-end among users. Each user should have a private copy. Having a back-end of SQL Server means that you have a pretty large capacity for simultaneous users. Here, in two words, is why you should give each user a private copy: File locking.

IF you had one FE file and everybody opened it directly from some shared folder, then the Windows File Locking system will get involved with something called "lock collision" and "lock arbitration." The amount of work to be done goes up as the FACTORIAL of the number of users AND if the FE is in a network-shared folder, that lock traffic hits the network. It is one of the reasons that IT staff hates to have Access on their network, because a bad DB configuration EATS network bandwidth.

On the other hand, if everyone has their own copy of the FE, there can be no collisions with the FE because all locks are private to that user. Other users are not using someone else's copy - they have their own. Add the fact of the BE file being managed by SQL Server, which means that you don't lock the actual BE file - only SQL server does. So file locking becomes a non-issue with SQL Server BE and separate copies of the FE.

As to the question of distributing updated FE files, look up in this forum the topic "Auto-updater" - here is one thread that might help.

Updating the front end on local server

Hello, I always wanted to know how to update the Fe and Be using a version number. Currently I have the Be in a folder on the local server and I distribute the Fe to each employee. Is there a way when I update the FE each person using the database FE when open it runs a version check and if its...

www.access-programmers.co.uk

But there are other threads as well. We have addressed the issue thoroughly.

 

[Isaac]

Distribute each person his own copy of the FE.

 

[MajP]

Not my words, but the reasons are many not to share the same front end.

You can do that, but it's not a recommended configuration. Multiple users opening the same front-end on a network share is subject to these negative effects:

1. Because the design of all objects has to be read across the network, it slows down the operation of the application.

2. Because Access wants to store the design of objects when you do things like set filters or sorts, the need to do it across the network slows things down, plus the various users will be stepping on each other's changes.

3. Because design changes are saved across the network, there's a greater chance of a network glitch causing corruption in the front-end.

4. If different users are using different versions of Access and Office, you run into the situation where library references can be upgraded to the highest version of any user, and then can't be automatically downgraded for lower-version users, which can cause the front-end to fail for those users.

5. If your front-end undertakes any design changes at run time, users will not be able to get exclusive access to the front-end to do that.

6. If your application uses any temporary or work tables in the front-end, users will be overwriting each other's data in those tables.

 

[Ashfaque]

Thanks The_Doc_Man, Isaac and MajP,

Excellently explained by you. So I have decided to go with individual FE.

Thanks a lot.