[dba-VB] SPAM-LOW: Re: Access data across the internet

jwcolby jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com
Fri Aug 28 12:43:18 CDT 2009


Gustav,

I have Hamachi already in place on the client's server as well as my system.  I routinely remote 
desktop in to his machine already.  I had set up the path to the data files (in / out) as a SysVar 
and so I mapped his remote database directory (on his server) to y: on my dev machine here at my 
office and changed my sysvar to point to the new location.

I then ran the existing Access application.  I set up my timer class to time the import, which uses 
a simple docmd.transfertext to pull the data from the CSV file into a first stage processing table.

Looking at five different runs, the time to import 835 records from a CSV file into a local table, 
across the internet using Hamachi is

Import From File took 72915 Milliseconds
Cleanup of raw data took 2354 Milliseconds
Import From File took 59250 Milliseconds
Cleanup of raw data took 4319 Milliseconds
Import From File took 23369 Milliseconds
Cleanup of raw data took 3307 Milliseconds
Import From File took 23354 Milliseconds
Cleanup of raw data took 3447 Milliseconds
Import From File took 23353 Milliseconds
Cleanup of raw data took 3181 Milliseconds

I had done a couple of runs before I set up the timer and the times there were approximately 24 
seconds as well.  So the "normal" time is around 24 seconds, but it can be quite lengthy as you can 
see, 73 seconds in the worst case so far.

What was going on during those longer time imports is unknown.  The server is being used to store 
these scan files as well as process them.  OTOH the server is also a 750 mhz pentium machine, pretty 
slow as servers go.  We have a new server ready to go online.

And of course this assumes fast internet at both ends.

I also built a button to allow them to open the source CSV files in notepad.  That only took

Time to open the file in Notepad 4930 Milliseconds
Time to open the file in Notepad 4290 Milliseconds
Time to open the file in Notepad 2855 Milliseconds
Time to open the file in Notepad 4274 Milliseconds

So obviously the import process itself is taking a fair amount of time.

Anyway... I would guess that for a small company like this, a Hamachi VPN to a central server is 
going to work quite well.  Low cost, reasonably fast, and easy to set up.

John W. Colby
www.ColbyConsulting.com


Gustav Brock wrote:
> Hi John
> 
> OK, that gives a better picture. This is not a "corporate" project.
> 
> If you almost have the application running in Access, a close to zero cost (wild?) option would be to establish a shared drive with the Gladinet Cloud Desktop:
> 
>   http://www.gladinet.com 
> 
> which creates a local drive from one of these storage options:
> 
> Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3)
> Google Picasa* Program
> Google Docs* Program
> Folders from Remote PCs - Standard Version only
> 
> Monthly costs at these remote storages are either free or extremely low.
> One issue would be the sharing of single files but - if stored as discrete files - you will have to manage this somehow no matter what solution you decide for.
> 
> /gustav




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