[AccessD] This on SharePoint

Eric Barro ebarro at verizon.net
Tue Jun 5 14:00:15 CDT 2007


Martin,

Have you actually had to restore a SP server after the production one
crashed? :)

Eric 

-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Martin Reid
Sent: Tuesday, June 05, 2007 11:47 AM
To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving
Subject: Re: [AccessD] This on SharePoint

Will keep you posted. We are building a approx 30,000 user system using MOSS
- will see how it goes. We do however have very very good back up for the
whole show (<: At the moment I have built a 200 user system which will store
hundreds of gigs of documents, provide room booking, document management,
personal web sites which will display a users Exchange accounts (Inbox, Cal
etc) We are running a distinct SQL Server mirrored on the SAN, Two web
server for front ends and we have additional servers coming online later
this week. The fact the data is help in SQL Server as opposed to the file
system is to be honest to us totally of no concern. The enterprise search is
really good as well.
 
So far speed of returning documents is excellent from both the client and
the server, Out of the box dev speed is really fast. However, once you leave
the out of the box behind we have a large learning curve as all of our stuff
is PHP and needs converting. Well actually we are looking at how we can call
the PHP apps from within MOSS. Again for this I have a large resource of
very talented people to work with unlike many of the consultants on the
list.
 
Of course in this version there is no RI but I believe that is coming. 
 
The basic idea is that every thing is a list in MOSS everything. 
 
Re Access. I will be using Access 2007 to permit staff to take data offline
and then resync back later. That to be honest is about all we will be doing
with Access and MOSS. You can also link to the MOSS lists from Access just
like SQL Server thus using the data in your own apps.
 
MOSS is more a development platform to be honest. A huge range of stuff out
of the box but a whole lot more can be done with it once you ramp up the
.NET skills.
 
For us it meets our needs for the sort of business model we want to have i.e
collaboration on an enterprise scale. 
 
JC contact me of list and I will give you a login to have a poke about with
if you promise to behave as its our dev server. But will give you a better
idea of what it is if you have a look.
 
Martin
 
 
 
 
 
Martin WP Reid
Training and Assessment Unit
Riddle Hall
Belfast
 
tel: 02890 974465
 

________________________________

From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com on behalf of jwcolby
Sent: Tue 05/06/2007 19:24
To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving'
Subject: Re: [AccessD] This on SharePoint



>My first question is: Why would you want to?

Want to what?

>SP is efficient and we use it extensively.

What is the measure of efficiency?  Storage requirements?  Speed of access?
Speed of development?  Organization of information?  Relating information?

>It doesn't make sense...

What doesn't make sense?

I am just poking and prodding to discover what it is and why it exists.

John W. Colby
Colby Consulting
www.ColbyConsulting.com
-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Jim Hewson
Sent: Tuesday, June 05, 2007 2:16 PM
To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving
Subject: Re: [AccessD] This on SharePoint

My first question is: Why would you want to?
SP is efficient and we use it extensively.
We manage several very large IDIQ contracts with as many a 60 plus
subcontractors, each with their own site, each with their own permissions.
In one SP instance we have 64 subcontractors, 15 active projects and have
probably managed at least 50 proposals with a total of about 300 users.
We use Access on some web-parts to hold data where lists are not
appropriate.
We create some of our own web-parts using C#.
It doesn't make sense...

Jim
jhewson at karta.com


-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Charlotte Foust
Sent: Tuesday, June 05, 2007 12:58 PM
To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving
Subject: Re: [AccessD] This on Sharepoint

It's more a condemnation of SharePoint than it is of Access, John.

Charlotte Foust

-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of jwcolby
Sent: Tuesday, June 05, 2007 10:52 AM
To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving'
Subject: [AccessD] This on Sharepoint

I just found this on a blog re Access 2007.  Since I don't use it, I can't
comment except to say, if it is true... OH MY GOD!

************************************************************

 Wednesday, October 11, 2006 2:13 AM by Mike

Do you know how data will be stored in SharePoint (SP) if you use SP as an
Access data store? 

In SP there is only ONE table that your data will be stored in.  That's
right, if your Access program has 5 tables (or a hundred tables) stored in
SharePoint, then data from the 5 (or 100) tables is intermingled into ONE
table.  The data table in SP is called UserData.

UserData is predefined by M$ to have 201 columns: 64 nvarchar(255), 16 int,
32 float, 16 datatime, 16 bit, 1 guid, 32 ntext, and 8 sql_variant (plus
16 non-user SP internal use columns).

So if you define a table in Access that has one integer column, and one
varchar(10) column and store it in SP, the table really has 201 columns (but
in this case only two columns will be used for your data).

There a few house keeping tables that SP uses, one is called Lists.
Lists is where your column names are stored.  So there is a map between your
column names and the predefined SP columns names of UserData.
Every time your data is read the map also needs to be read so that SP can
send the data to Access with the correct column names. 

The real columns names of UserData are (you guessed it): nvarchar1,
nvarchar2 - nvarcahr64, int1 - int16, float1- float32, datatime1 -
datatime16, bit1 - bit16, guid1, ntext1 - ntext32, sql_variant1 -
sql_variant8.

The rows of your table will be intermixed with rows from all other tables
and all SP "lists".  I'm not making this up!

Wow, all I can say is WOW WHAT A CLUGE!  It is boggling to even try to think
of the performance and interaction problems that can arise from such an
outright wacky scheme.

If you want to use SP with Access, there should be a big bold warning:

WARNING, STORING ACCESS DATA IN SHAREPOINT WACKY, IF YOU REALLY WANT TO DO
THIS, FIRST GO TO THE PHYSIATRIST TO CONFIRM THAT YOU ARE CRAZY.
THEN IF YOU ARE CERTIFIED CRAZY, ITS OK, YOU CAN MAKE IT WORK, JUST BE SURE
THAT YOU DON'T STORE MORE THAN A FEW ROWS OF SIMPLE DATA AND FOR BEST
PERFORMANCE DON'T ALLOW THE SHAREPOINT SERVER TO BE USED FOR ANYTHING OTHER
THAN YOUR JUMBLED UP PSEUDO TABLES.

Note, if you have virtual arrays of octal-hyper 100Ghz processors with 100Gs
of memory (like the M$ Access team) you may find that storing Access data in
the SharePoint pseudo tables may actually work during testing.  Use real
data on real systems at your own risk.

Using SharePoint for Access data storage will be as useful as Microsoft Bob.

************************************************************

Does anyone out there know anything about this?

John W. Colby
Colby Consulting
www.ColbyConsulting.com

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