Topic: Access Data Base and E-smith

[Adserg]

Hi all

Silly Question but i have to ask.

I have met today a complete mr Microsoft head didnt have anything nice to say about linux in anyway. (Id love him to be wrong)

He has told a customer of ours that you cant run an access data base from an e-smith server. Now i have never played with access myself but our customer has already created himself an access database which sits in an ibay which is accessable to a number of users.

Question: what is he talking about?

Thanks again guys n gals

Kindest Regards

ADSERG

[Bill Talcott]

You can save an Access file on an SME's, just like you could with Win95 or any other networked OS. However, I don't think you can access the SME as a SQL source without some work. See http://forums.contribs.org/index.php?topic=20053.msg78844#msg78844 for more info. I don't know much about that fancy database stuff, but I think he meant accessing the underlying database stuff, not just saving an Access file on the SME over the network.

[Vinnie]

Maybe he is mixing up an database from Access with an databse from Oracle ...

[Arkman]

Access databases work fine from SME (Redhat), so your MS dude is whacked (I've always wanted to put that in writing). I have many Access mdb's operating from samba/i-bay shares on many different servers. No problems to report.
You can't run a 'true' Microsoft RDBMS (i.e. MS-SQL or MSDE) from a linux box as you can't install it there. Maybe that's what he's talking about.

[Trevor Drake-Brockman]

Think Samba can have a problem with MS Access databases in they are shared. IE MYOB
In some cases the Access database can become corrupt, there are a number of setting in Samba that can be set like turning Opertunitistic locking off and other things.
I tried some but did not have time to persue so gave up and put on a shared Win9x drive.

Has anyone got a working MS Access database in general use that is access by multiple uses and has had no problems.  If so maybe they will share the items that need to be set in Samba etc to get it all working.

[ADSERG]

Thank you very much guys,  Thanks for your help.

Regards

ADSERG

[Tibor]

Read this article:
http://www.e-smith.org/article.php3&mode=threaded&order=0
look for section "Windows file sharing support".

[David Woolley]

Blissfully unaware that there may be any difficulties, I have run a multi-user Access97 database on an SME server for over a year with no corruptions.  I even synchronise replicas and design masters (MS speak for taking the most recent record per row in each table to all copies of the database) over IPSec vpn between different geographical sites of the business - all within SME.

So it sounds like your friend has an axe to grind.

David

[Dan Brown]

...and if you really want to give the MS guy heartburn, mention that SME includes an SQL server, with an unlimited user license, at no additional charge...

[ADSERG]

Hi David

You could be right. Our customer loves the SME box, after all we binned the NT OS.

Thanks Tibor/David

ADSE

[Tom Keiser]

I have a client with SME 4.1.2 at 3 locations, and 5.6 at two more, and they are using an Access 97 / Access 2000 database with no problems that I am aware of. This has been working fine for more than a year.

Tom

[ADSERG]

LOL.....Cheers Dan

[Trevor Drake-Brockman]

Tom Keiser wrote:
>
> I have a client with SME 4.1.2 at 3 locations, and 5.6 at two
> more, and they are using an Access 97 / Access 2000 database
> with no problems that I am aware of. This has been working
> fine for more than a year.
>
> Tom

Do they use in a multi user environment?  

And if so did you make any changes to SME to get it to work?

[Arkman]

In the past I've had too tweak the smb.conf to get things working perfectly, but I haven't had to do that in a long time. It was long enough ago that I've forgotten what I variables I changed. I can post the smb.conf fragments when I'm in the office next. I would also suggest swinging by the samba web site and seeing what's cooking there.

[Gary]

Your friend is right in saying that Access is incompatible as the underlying database system, for say a website. You can install ASP on Linux with the likes of ChilliASP but you can't make it interact with an Access database like you can on a Windows server - no way.
Sharing it in an iBay is just treating it like a normal file - of course it will work - but utilising the actual OS to talk to it is impossible - but why would you want to? MySQL is far better, and if your friend is using the incompatibility with Access as a Linux con - he needs to seriously get a life!