Re: MS Access usefulness and size restrictions

"wayne" <no_at_email.please.com> wrote in message news:9fs2ie$5nm_at_dispatch.concentric.net... >
> Access starts to falter when you go over 5 users (this was actually
 measured
> by us) and when you start to go to a large number of records and/or large
> database file size.

What do you have? A falter meter? Neat tool, but I'd send it back and get something that works.

The gauge I use to see what works and what's robust is reality.

Just yesterday I was asked by a client who is an ISP to look at an Access database in use by one of his clients to see if it was a candidate for SQL-Server. It was. But I doubt it will be scaled up very soon.

You see, it was a nightmare database. Totally un-normalized with about 30 concurrent users all hitting the entire, unsplit, over 576,000 rows, 126 MB, over a Win98 peer-to-peer network, at a rate of over 150 entries an hour. And guess what? It's been running on Access 2000 for over a year and a half, and the Win 98 "server" probably is re-booted less than once every 60 days. Guess what else? The system was hit by lightning last week, taking out both of the hubs and 18 of their network cards, almost putting them totally down for the rest of the day, but the database never faltered. They connected one machine with a good NIC and the "server" and worked at 10% capacity for the rest of the day.

And I'm supposed to convince these folks that Access is a "toy" and they need to spend over $60K on a "real server" and a "real database engine" and CALs? Do you really think I'll have any luck, when they can totally replace everything they have, INCLUDING hardware for less than that?

BTW, do you have any more of that stuff you and Larry Ellison are smoking?

--
Arvin Meyer