Proper way to program a Microsoft Access Backend Database in a Multiuser Environment

Question

There is a prevailing opinion that regards Access as an unreliable backend database for concurrent use, especially for more than 20 concurrent users, due to the tendency of

Answer 1

I don't believe the number of users is a limitation with MS-Access Jet Engine. My understanding is that the Jet Engine queues up concurrent maintenance transactions to apply them 1 at a time (like a printer queue does to print print jobs). Via ODBC connectivity, and an intelligent user-application program that manages the record set sizes, locking of records open for edit, and only maintains DB connections long enough to retrive a record and save a record, that puts little strain on the jet engine. I look at mdb file as tables. You can conceivably have 100s of these in one database, or more. The SQL querying to these tables would be by random access, and the naming convention of the mdb files lets the SQL query built in the applciations program which table (mdb file) to access. MS-Access databases can be 10s 100s or 1000s of Gigabytes this way and run smoothly. Proper indexing and normalizing of data to revent storing of redundant data also helps. I've never run into a database crash or concurrency issue with MS-Access and ODBC and Win32 Perl GUI interface driving the applciation. I use no MS-Access Objects other than tables, indexes, and perhaps views/queries. And yes, I store the database on a dedicated PC and install my applications software on each workstation PC.