Steve Erbach
erbachs at gmail.com
Wed May 16 12:56:12 CDT 2007
Dear Group, I've been the chief designer for a vertical market application that was created with Microsoft Access 2003. The application has been installed in a handful of locations around the country, some single-user, some multi-user. The man who markets and owns the application would like to convert it to a centralized web-based application. To keep the cost of maintenance and upgrades to a minimum I have suggested that rather than creating a separate SQL Server database for each customer installation of the product, every customer currently using the Access product would append his data to a "master" set of tables in one database on one SQL Server. The upshot would be that each company would have its own ID and the transactions and products specific to each company would be tagged with that ID. (There are certain tables that could be shared in common...certain lists of items common to all customers). Each company would use Views, etc., that show just its own data. None of this data is proprietary or particularly sensitive (it's hazmat record-keeping). Just for a quick look at the current app: http://www.swerbach.com/EnviroPlus/ . The SQL Server capability would be rented from one of the commercial web hosts. The volume of data is actually quite small. We're talking maybe 5 MB in Access for a couple years worth of information for each company. Of course, if the server goes down then everybody goes down. But the positives, I think, would be ease of upgrading, keeping everybody at the same revision level simultaneously, and low cost. Do you see any flies in the ointment here? I think it's very feasible, but I'd welcome any cautioning voices. Sincerely, Steven W. Erbach Neenah, WI http://thetowncrank.blogspot.com