[Lazarus] MS Access file - is it 'accessible' concurrently ?

Reinier Olislagers reinierolislagers at gmail.com
Wed Sep 7 21:37:01 CEST 2011


On 7-9-2011 20:18, Michael Van Canneyt wrote:
> On Wed, 7 Sep 2011, Reinier Olislagers wrote:
>> On 7-9-2011 18:00, Dimitri Smits wrote:
>>> Access ALWAYS was intended for non-concurrent access (pun intended :-))!
>>>
>>> When you want to use concurrent access, you should use MS SQL if you
>>> want to stay in the same/similar dialect/syntax realm.
>>>
>>> The problem stems in part from the fact that it is an embedded DB
>>> engine (even if over ODBC) as opposed to a dedicated, dispatching and
>>> mitigating server in a client/server setting that handles the
>>> concurrency issues.
>> Eeehm, yes, it is a file-based database system.
>> Still, Access developers have succesfully (and cheaply) been developing
>> quite reliable, split Access front-end (GUI)/back end (data) solutions
>> for department-level use.
> 
> I forwarded this answer to our helpdesk. They're now all in the
> reanimation section of the nearest hospital, after which they'll be held
> for 6 months of treatment in the local psychiatric ward.
> 
> "Concurrent", "MS-Access" and "reliable" in one sentence was just too
> much for them...
> 
> Michael.
Sorry I was the cause for these medical bills. Hope you can get a nice
fresh new crop from college or something ;)

Might go to show how much your helpdesk people know of good Access
development (yes, that's not an oxymoron) ;)
Did I mention department-level use, thereby limiting the number of
concurrent users, a good front end/back end design etc??

But who cares, you brought up a valid point: the Access reputation has
been tarnished by its success (easy to slap together quickly) & the
corresponding botched "development" jobs by fly by night cowboys that
earned the well-deserved scorn of real IT people.
Another reason I won't go into details regarding Access is because with
Lazarus/FPC, you don't need to needlessly constrain yourself to a closed
platform that only runs on Windows (and not on OSX, Linux)

Graeme brought up another valid point: yes you can install SQL Server
express, but why not install Firebird instead.
(There was a reason I specified Firebird first in the client/server dbs
the OP could try).

I'm going to crawl back into my hole now and dream of proper CSV export
in FPC, something a certain database product has been able to do well
for quite some time ;)

With my sympathy to your former helldesk people,
Reinier




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