Re: Which Database?

In article <01bdcfa1$d274dbc0$88190404_at_tima>, "Tim Albion" <tima_at_glentel.com> writes:

>The daily number of transactions at each store is quite small (<100),

This doesn't sound as if you'll have many users concurrently updating the customer tables. That is the real limiting factor.

>however we will be maintaining a customer database of about 50,000
>customers (duplicated in each store).

If no single table will exceed 1GB in total size, then you will not have exceeded Access' physical size limitations. (Each .MDB can be up to 1GB, and you can link to tables in multiple MDBs.) I don't know a good _predictor_ of performance. Get some good reference material from www.microsoft.com and a copy of _Access 97 Developer's Handbook_ by Litwin, Getz, and Gilbert and study the recommendations for multiuser performance. Design and implement your database the best you can and test it.  

>The powers that be tell me that it HAS to run under Windows.

What alternative would you prefer? Most of us here, since this is the Microsoft Access newsgroup, are comfortable with the Windows environment. Do the powers that be specify what "flavor" of Windows? Could be Win 3.1 if their hardware is limited, or Win 95, or Win 98, or Win NT Workstation 3.51, or Win NT Workstation 4, or Win NT Server 3.51, or Win NT Server 4, or, presumably soon, Win NT 5.  

>I am concerned that Access may not be up to it, but licensing costs for
>more robust DB's make it quite appealing.

How important is reliability to the business? I seriously doubt you will have a performance problem, but what are you going to do if there's a power outage, or if the network is a bit unstable and drops connections now and then, resulting in corruption of your customer database? Will you train someone in each store how to repair and compact? Will the customers wait while that occurs?

Of course, we don't (and I'd wager that, at this point, you don't) have enough information to make a recommendation. Application design always involves some trade-offs, of which database software is only one. Received on Tue Aug 25 1998 - 00:00:00 CEST