Thanks for that helpful email george, it's something I've been looking at as
well.
In a situation I'm tackling now I've rewritten the core part of the access
such that it is dependant upon data recieved from the server, rather than
the server being dependant upon data from access. So far it appears to be
working much better, but I would be interested to know your opinions.
Tom
----- Original Message -----
From: "George Whiffen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, September 07, 2001 5:10 PM
Subject: [PHP] Re: newbie looking to sync access with MySQL
> Tom,
>
> Every man and his dog seems to have an Access database they want to view
> on the web.
>
> What I usually do for them is :
>
> a) Tell them to save the data from Access as a text file, comma separated.
(It's
> a standard Access option).
>
> b) Give them a web page where they can upload it, (<INPUT TYPE=FILE etc.,
it's
> discussed in the php manual).
>
> c) Parse the file using parsecsv and store away the bits you want in
MySQL. If you
> get them to leave the field names on the first line of the file (another
standard
> Access option), you can do a quick check that all the fields are there and
in
> the expected place, before you put the data into MySQL.
>
> d) Serve the web pages from MySQL.
>
> e) You may still need your Web Data Administration. There's often missing
data
> that you need for sensible web pages e.g. categories, more user friendly
descriptions
> of codes etc.
>
>
> >From the customer's point of view the uploads are a manual exercise which
doesn't sound
> very sexy, and it would probably take them 3-4 minutes every time.
> The good thing is that it's all pretty easy, and they should be able to
get their
> most junior member of staff to do it. They also get the comfort of
knowing if anything
> went wrong.
>
> If that's not acceptable, it's more tricky. In principle you could use an
> ODBC interface to their Access database to establish a live connection to
it
> and suck up the data that way, but it's fiddly and much less reliable than
> a boring old upload.
>
> Another option would be to execute the extract and transfer of the data
via a batch
> job running on their platform. But, personally, I would hate to have to
support
> that kind of activity.
>
> The bottom line as far as I'm concerned is that if they insist on holding
important
> information on a MS platform, they can expect a) not to have a seamless
operation,
> b) to have to watch out for problems themselves! Once they see how easy
an extract/upload
> is they probably won't mind anyway.
>
> Tom Beidler wrote:
> >
> > I have a potential customer that just called and would like to create a
web
> > site that would display secure info for their clients. Currently his
> > employees are using a flat Access database to add, edit and delete
records
> > and he would like to keep it that way.
> >
> > Normally I would create a web manager for them to add, edit and delete
the
> > MySQL database. Is there an easy, reliable way to sync up Access with
MySQL.
> > Maybe a nightly script that could upload the contents of Access to
MySQL.
> >
> > Would it be easier to start with ASP and SQL Server?
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Tom
>
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