[AccessD] Woe unto Run-time - I need your input

Our applications aren't sold by retailers, but we market to drilling
companies all over the world and we ALWAYS include the runtime.  Our
apps are secured and may run on a wide variety of Windows versions with
and without an installed version of Access.  To make sure they actually
work on the target machines, installing the runtime and supporting files
is the only way.  We use Wise and SageKey scripts to build our
installers because they are far more flexible and intelligent than the
wizard that comes with the developers edition.

Charlotte Foust

-----Original Message-----
From: jane flowere [mailto:janeflower2999 at yahoo.com] 
Sent: Saturday, April 26, 2003 8:59 PM
To: accesslist
Subject: [AccessD] Woe unto Run-time - I need your input


Hello,

I am new to this list. A friend of mine mentioned that
I should come here looking for advice on an issue I am
looking at. He said if I am looking for answers to
questions with Access there is no better place on the
web. Hopefully someone here can point me in the right
direction given my situation.

I have been working with access for a few years now
and really like it as a development tool. I have a
database system, a simple security layer, an
interface, and a reporting tool all bundled into one
package. After I got comfortable working with VBA and
some of the idiosyncrasies of the development tool I
really feel in love with it. 

There is one thing though that I am really stuck on
though and it is deployment. I have to send the
run-time with it. This of course makes since but it is
so big (using access 2000). I seem to remember a
smaller runtime with earlier versions of access? Even
the access 2000 mini install is 40megs. Is this the
case with access 2002?

Here in the office I am okay with this, as I know what
is and is not on a computer. But I am very concerned
about selling an application via the web or off the
shelf using this development tool because I have to
send the run-time. Does anyone here on the list have
any experience selling software off the shelf that
uses the access run-time? If so can you give me some
pointers? 

My friend pointed me in the direction of the
sage-key/wise install builder software, which creates
a slick install, and after burning the setup.exe it
created to a CD (with the run-time in the bundle) I
figured I was good to go. But then I got to thinking
about some different situations and realized I needed
to re think a few things. What happens when I send
this out and it installs run-time access 2000 on a
computer that has access 97 or access 2002? What
happens if they don't have an access install when they
load this, but then later install access 97 or 2002?
All the material I have seen on the web says it is
quite a mess, is that true? If they do this I think
they will see a prompt every time they move in and out
of the two versions of access when the registry is
updated. Is there anyway to avoid this?

Does anyone know of an off the shelf software package
that might be sold at a major retailer, even a smaller
one, that uses the access run-time? I'm just wondering
if anyone does this.

Also something else crossed my mind about data
backups. I have my application split into a front and
backend setup with all the data in the backend file. I
would like to provide my users a way to backup their
data but I know they won't all have zip drives or cd
burners. Is there anyway to span an mdb across several
floppies using vba?

Thank you for any comments or guidance you can provide
me.

Jane


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