Splitting MS Access to Front End and Backend but Backend in a different Computer

Question

We have a MS Access Database with millions rows and I need to Split the Front End and Back End. Can the Backend be stored on a Windows Server or a high performance computer? So the developers can connect to the Central Backend Server and DB work is done on the Server and the front end developers using their desktop and not the Backend DB machine.

Used the SPLIT Option in MS ACCESS and works well.

Yes, this can be done. But you should think about migrating this huge amount of data to a SQL server. — Unhandled Exception
yeah! unfortunately, in this place, it takes forever to get approval for getting MS Server. I come from the Oracle and DB2 world and I understand MS Access does have it's limitations. — HelloCognos
MySQL and SQLServerExpress are free. However, they are limited to 10GB file size. — June7
I know it's fee but think about organizational limitations in security and other factors. i.e. Why are you establishing a database, while we are the powerhouse?? thanks — HelloCognos

rednoise rednoise · Accepted Answer · 2019-09-13T18:53:08

Yes you can but the bottle neck here could be the network, you don't need much power for a split Access database. Access moves a lot of data because of its design. If you query a table then Access will read the whole table from the server to filter it later on the client.

If your frontend is in early state of development consider using sql server (or any database server with odbc) and runing every query in passtrough mode.

Also think in a easy way to distribute the frontend to clients when you make changes.

Splitting MS Access to Front End and Backend but Backend in a different Computer

1 Answers