Any MS Access Gurus here ?

[Trugga]

I'm looking to write a database solution in MS Access for a number of business processes at work.

I have used/written Access in the past although on a much earlier version. It is a daunting task I know, but will be acheivable with possibly a one year time frame (to include function and load testing).

Aspects anticipated to include:
Enquiry
Quote
Order
Purchasing
Manufacturing
Raw material
Poduct
Invoicing

basically, the equirey/quote-order-manufacture-invoice lifecycle (our quote to order ratio is a healthy 8/10)

2 questions (MS Access 2010)

1. With approx 10 seats, and the master tables located on a server share, can each client simultaneously read/write to the tables (I think they can but would like clarification)
2. How easy are nested tables... Each Customer will have a number of Orders, each order to have a number of Line Items (I've not had to do this before).

Any pointers gretly received.

I used to work with MQ, SAP, Excel and Access as a data integrator, but returned to mechanical engineering five years ago

Lawrence

[furball]

The last time I did anything with access was years and years ago at college and I hated it. From what I remember the entire database would be locked when someone was editing it and everyone else had read only access to prevent it from getting screwed up. It could well be the case that the current version can just lock individual records so that multiple people can access different bits but I haven't looked cos I wouldn't touch it if you paid me but then I never got a taste for programming.

Might want to try somewhere like this place http://www.utteraccess.com/forum/forums.html

[Alchamist]

If you want multi-access database then you are rapidly exceeding the capabilities of access. I am assuming that you are not going to want to run to the expense of mssql, which is understandable considering the licensing cost/nightmare of Microshaft. You could try running it on SQL server express, but again you will rapidly run into volume and performance issues. The good news is that there are open source alternatives that will work suitably well for this.

As for "nested tables", the term you are looking for is "relational database", and is very achievable, but takes a lot of planning ahead of time.

More than happy to spend some time going through this with you at some point L

(or of course, you could shell out for Sage and have it all in one pre-made package )