Share Ms accesss database over lan network safely (1 Viewer)

[abubasil]

Goo day for all.
I have something nice to share with you.
Well at first you might solved this before, but I was glad to do it myself.
This is how to share a database over lan network safely. the solution was so simple , I split my database into two parts , part one has the forms and will work as the interface , I put this one in a shared folder with read only property , and linked this part to the part two which has the tables.
and I moved these two parts into a pc where no MS office installed. as I said the part one was in a read only-shared folder I named it one
and the second file that has the linked table in another location which is not shared at all.
Now I opened the shared folder named one from another Pc which has Msoffice installed , MSAccess told me that this database is a read only one and I will not be able to edit .. okay, I added, and edited some records and everything was fine, IT works the interface part was protected and cannot be renamed or deleted
YET I was able to work via this protected part to save my data.

 

[smig]

I recommand not using a shared front-end db.

Sent from my m2 note using Tapatalk

 

[The_Doc_Man]

smig beat me to it. Every user with a desktop or laptop that will be accessing the database must have a separate copy of the front-end file. Otherwise, you open yourself up to serious lock contention of FE items that don't need to be in contention and don't work well when they ARE in contention. You didn't say whether everyone has Access on their workstation or laptop, but that would be preferred. If you are using RDP or some CITRIX variant, it is also recommended that each user logging in would do so to a private folder unique to that user, and the FE file would then be opened from that private folder. Shared FE files will in the long run lead to corruption and maintenance problems. Use the Search function of this forum for "split database" to see probably a couple of hundred articles on that topic.

Putting the database in a READ ONLY folder is also contrary to the published way of sharing a back-end file. The recommendation for this type of sharing is that every user of the DB should have Windows "MODIFY" permissions (that's the broad-brush name of the permission class) over that folder and its contents. It is not recommended to have it so restricted as "READ" class.

A solution that worked for us was to get our IT guys to make a group name to represent our DB users. Then where we placed the BE file, we gave that group identifier the MODIFY permissions. Then we made the DB users - but nobody else - members of that group. Your IT guys should approve of that configuration. The U.S. Dept. of Defense did for my most recent big BE database.

 

[sneuberg]

Shared FE files will in the long run lead to corruption and maintenance problems.

How can this happen if the FE is read only? Is there anything but anecdotal evidence that this is true? I'd like to see an sequence of events in this configuration known to cause corruption that would not cause corruption if the FE was not shared.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

A shared FE that is read-only isn't the problem. It is that file locking can cause contention issues in the BE that lead to the BE corruption. But if I remember correctly, the act of opening a query from the FE starts to consume free space in the FE file as a working temporary table even though the source is the BE. I could be wrong about that, and in fact I'm willing to believe I'm wrong because I can't recall where I heard that. But I know that a Read-Only file and Access generally don't go together.

If the folder permissions are such that the files are also Read Only in the shared folder holding the FE, then your BIG problem is that the .LDB file isn't writeable and that will stop sharing from happening because in that case, the person opening the app first opens the LDB file in a writeable mode and THAT write-locks everything.

Note that abubasil said that even though it was read-only, updates were occurring. Therefore, "read only" obviously isn't what is really going on.

 

[abubasil]

Hi people, I am sorry , it was like a big lie , I was unable to redo that attempt again. so I must be mistaken and was deceived by another database file in the same PC which my FE was talking to, I am sorry again, and forgive me for this too late apologize for I was busy working around to SAFE THE DATABASE and luckily I found the solution with odbc and mysql connector and thank you for you all.

 

[Minty]

If the folder permissions are such that the files are also Read Only in the shared folder holding the FE, then your BIG problem is that the .LDB file isn't writeable and that will stop sharing from happening because in that case, the person opening the app first opens the LDB file in a writeable mode and THAT write-locks everything.

Note that abubasil said that even though it was read-only, updates were occurring. Therefore, "read only" obviously isn't what is really going on.

Access is very clever and appears to be able to write to "read only" locations.

I made the network location for the master FE copy read only - for obvious reasons - and found that someone with read only permissions for that folder was perfectly able to open the FE in that location and create a lock file there... No idea how but it was definitely happening - and funnily enough causing some corruption when the open FE was being copied over to other users local FE location.