Local LAN - is Dialup same as other users ?

[RobCrombie]

've been doing VB for years, using Access DBs, but always single user.
I'm developing my first multi-user app, so far so good (VB6, Access 97, Windows XP).
I have two questions regarding LANs
(Forgive me, as I have had no previous experience with LANs, and don't have one myself.)
There will be approx 8 computers connected via a LAN, with the Access DB on
the 'main' pc. I have tested the remote copies of my pgm to ensure that they can connect to the central DB. That worked.
However they are just now installing a proper Server, and my FIRST question is, will I have to rediesign ?
The approach I used during the earlier testing was to have the user on the remote pc, browse for the central DB, and my pgm stored the path, in an ini file. It's a wee while since I did those tests (on their computers), and cannot find the paths that were stored (funny letters up the front). The beauty was I did not have to know what they meant, as the pgms store it, and then use it when connecting.
Will their change over to a proper Server, make any difference to my logic(cough!) ?

Forgive my use of 'remote' above because I just meant users in other offices.
SECOND question -
They wish an employee in an interstate office to have a copy of my pgm, and dial in to the server. Then he too will connect to my Access DB on the central Server.
I am assuming (hoping), that my pgm will never know the difference. It will just handle his interaction with the DB, like as if he was in the office next door, on the LAN.
Am I deluding myself ? (Will I have to handle him differently ?

(I have designed so that the pgms never maintain long connections, so my question is not related to DB corruption etc. Just the finding, storing of path, and then re-using the stored path for futute connections)


Appreciate any help.

[Joacim Andersson]

Well it doesn't really matter if the database is located on a server. They still need a share for the folder in which the DB resides (or a parent folder) and depending on how you connect to the DB they could either map a network drive to that share or use an UNC path.

For your second question: You're not handling the dial-up, if I understood it correctly. He will be using a remote dial-up to log on to the Lan. In that case it will all be transparent (but of course working remote with a modem connection will be a lot slower).

[RobCrombie]

I just use code for setting up the db.connection string, so it sounds like my -
- user browse for path
- pgm store path
- pgm use stored path from now on
will still be ok.

Thanks for the feedback.

[dglienna]

Access degrades its performance as the number of concurrent users increase. If you don't have everybody using the db at once, then having one more user won't hurt, probably, but keep in mind, if you want nine people to use the db at the same time, then Access is probably not the best package to be using.

[Joacim Andersson]

Dglienna is right but it all depends on how much database access there is. You might use it only for something simple as user validation and in that case you can of course have pretty many users. If there's not much data updates made but it's mainly used for quick data lookup you can also use Access with much more then 10 users. So it all depends on the data usage.