Replication Advise

[reez88]

Hi,

I have a BE database which is only updated twice a day.

The issue is I need to replicate the data to two sites which do not have a comman drive. And getting a comman drive is nearly impossible.

I thought I will have two BE for the sites, but only one site will update it, then the data needs to be replicated to the other site.

What would be the best way to go ahead with this?

Many Thanks.

 

[JamesMcS]

How about using the network path in your table links rather than your mapped drive letter? So \\servername\foldername rather than its mapped letter...

Never a good idea to have multiple back ends, unless one of them is a backup of course

 

[reez88]

Thanks for the reply JamesMcS,

Actually I should have made myself clearer than above. Apologies for that..
But there isn't a common network drive. Current scenario is a huge excel file being emailed among the users.

These users are in two different sites which do not have a common network share.. (actually this is like two different companies, getting one company to open ports in there firewall for others to access is next to impossible). So the only thing I could think of was to have two backends. As I am newbie to these kind of development I thought to ask the experts.

Please share any options that I can consider.

Once again may thanks for your time.

 

[JamesMcS]

Ah, I see.... well, anything's goiing to be better than a giant excel sheet

OK - so, you're going to be emailing the DB between companies? One thing to consider would be file size I suppose...

 

[spikepl]

Check this post for some ideas: http://www.access-programmers.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=210838

 

[reez88]

Thanks both of you,

We have SSH connection among the sites.
Is there any way this can be used effectively?

 

[JamesMcS]

Morning!

Yes I believe you can, having had a bit of a google about it - I've not used SSH before, but if you can open the connection and see the remote computer through the network, you can link tables between two databases and share the info that way. That would definitely be the best way to go in this situation, I reckon....

 

[reez88]

Wow.. I never thought it would be possible to link tables over an SSH connection.
Thanks a lot for the idea. I will check on that.

 

[JamesMcS]

Well... I'm just guessing really - but essentially, if you can see the remote PC in your network browser, you'll also be able to see it in the link table wizard in Access... let us know how it goes!

One thing I can foresee is that you'll have to make sure the connection is open every time you access a linked table, otherwise you'll get an error, obviously... but I would also think it's possible to have the datbaase open the SSH connection in code when it opens.

 

[reez88]

looks like I am running out of luck on this one..the machine I connect via SSH has paths starting by "/" which suggests they run non windows os..

Is there any possibility to view these folders using a file browser or add a network drive?

 

[JamesMcS]

Can you see it in the network broswer in windows?

 

[reez88]

no, I can not see it.. i tried to run \\ "server ip" and enter my ssh credentials. I was presented a blank screen with no folders on it.

any ideas?

Would you be able to point me to some (vba)code which can be used to download a file from ssh?

 

[JamesMcS]

Hmmm. I've not used SSH connections before but they obviously behave differently than I guessed they would. Have you got shared folders on the remote machine? How do you normally access the files remotely?

 

[reez88]

I use a program called 'SSH Secure Shell Client' to download the files into my local machine. As I mentioned earlier, the remote location I connect has paths like "/folder1/folder2" (note the forward slash). I am confused...

 

[JamesMcS]

I've just googled "SSH Tunneling map network drive" and come up with the following, perhaps this will help:

http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/jp107/xp-remote/ssh-map/