Re: Which Database?

LMLinson <lmlinson_at_aol.com> wrote in article

> This doesn't sound as if you'll have many users concurrently updating
> the customer tables. That is the real limiting factor.
Due to the costs of connecting each store to our head office I am thinking of having a separate database in each store, then polling the stores at night to
update the central database at head office. As a result it would be quite rare
for there to be any concurrent updating.

> If no single table will exceed 1GB in total size, then you will not have
> exceeded Access' physical size limitations.
Shouldn't be a problem.

> >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.
At the moment it's really between Win 95, Win NT or Unix (in that order, basically
because of price and the resources that we have in our IT department). The final
decision really depends upon the stability of the platform (something I'm hoping to
get a handle on from input such as your own).

> 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?
Now we get to the heart of the matter. As you say performance will not be a problem,
however corruption of the database would be of concern. This is where I am a bit worried about Access's capabilities. Does Access have any form of before imaging or after imaging? What forms of database recovery are available
using Access? With the wages being paid to retail staff at the moment I seriously
doubt that we will have someone in each store that can repair and compact a database.
If a problem were to occur we would fall back to reliable paper!

> 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.
Thanks for your input. This is part of the process of getting the information to make
a recommendation.

Tim Received on Tue Aug 25 1998 - 00:00:00 CEST