Quote Originally Posted by NeedSomeAnswers View Post
I thought i would chip in with my two pence worth.

You have been given some good advice on this thread, but i would just re-iterate this.

Access is a terrible database, and yes i know that with good design you can get it to work perfectly well for a fairly small user base, but that's not the point, its terrible over a network and it slows down your other network traffic as well as your system.

Also when you can get a completely free version of SQL EXPRESS 2005 why would you use it any more ?

You big problem DataEmpress is that if you move your back end to SQL Server & leave you front end in Access although this is perfectly do-able i think you would be disappointed in the speed improvements you would get.

Linked tables are not great, trust me i have had the pleasure of looking after a system where they had done just this (move the back end to SQL Server while keeping the front end in Access) and it is just not a great solution, it works but it's not great.

The best solution would obviously to have your database as SQL Server Express & then move your front end to a .Net application, however i understand that might be difficult for you to accomplish.

It might be simpler in the short term to get your "data entry people" to use wired connections. Have you tested if there is any difference in speed if you plug one of the laptops into the network against wireless ?

There's been much activity in this thread over the weekend, and I'd like to thank everyone. You've all given me a ton to think about. I'm willing to mark this thread resolved any time you're tired of discussing the subject, but selfishly I'm learning so much that I want to keep it going as much as I can.

When I first started using Access I thought it was the best, most powerful database a person could imagine. I had no idea there was anything else out there. Keep in mind, my background is in literature, not computers. The database I'm talking about, I've been given from program headquarters. All our programs have the same Access database.

While I can get away with splitting it, I don't know if I could get away with a new front end, even if I knew a .Net language. I'm getting the sense though that the .Net languages are very important to learn. There's little chance we'd be able to get our data entry staff wired due to office layouts and space constraints.

I have no doubt a wired connection would be much better, since the database does not have any of the speed/performance issues on my computer. I split the database and found performance had improved on the network connection. However, I'm not sure what the difference is between the backend that Access uses when the database is split and a SQL Server Express backend. Is SQL server supposed to be better?