Running an Access Application on a Website

[Carol W.]

I'm considering developing an Access application that would be accessible to a (non-profit) group via a website. I'm fairly confident in my Access skills but have little experience in developing a web application.

So, I went looking (using Google, of course) for something that would allow an Access app to be run in a web environment. I came up with this product. I haven't finished looking. This was one of the first products I found.

There is a fully functional 30 day free trial of ASP Maker 8. Before I download/install it, I was wondering if anyone has had any experience with this product or has any alternate suggestions.

Thanks in advance.

[Wendell]

I haven't had experience using ASPMaker, though I have had some experience doing websites using ASP. I observed that it was number 73 on the list of Web Development Software on CNET - which doesn't mean a whole lot in my view. I did note that FrontPage 2003 was the 4th most popular product in this category recently, which seems surprising since it is no longer part of the Office product. Also note that Access Data Pages are no longer supported. Access 2010 does offer some attractive features for publishing an Access database to the web in conjunction with SharePoint, and seems to be the direction Microsoft is pointing. Note however that it doesn't work all that well for databases with tables that contain a large number of records. Some questions that might point you in one direction or another. Are you hosting this on a commercial site, or on a local server? If on a local server, what is the OS - Windows or Linus? What version of Access is being used?

[Carol W.]

Wendell,

Thank you for the reply.

I'm still thinking this over. We are currently using a commercial web based product for our members to sign up for "shifts" in various work areas. We've been using it for almost a year and it works pretty well. The one negative is the price, which goes up every year and has the potential to increase if we go over a certain number of members. I thought that I could fairly easily develop something like this in Access, primarily as a cost saving thing, but then the whole web development would be new for me.

In answer to your questions, we probably would use commercially available web space which is relatively cheap. I would imagine that I would use Access 2003 since that is what they currently have installed as part of Office 2003. To retrain members in the "ribbon" in 2007 or 2010 would be a big task that would probably fall to me. Our members, in general, are not very computer savvy.

I took a closer look at ASP Maker 8 and downloaded a demo zip file. I have not yet installed the 30 day free trial. Apparently, the only objects that the demo Access mdb file contains is tables. I conclude (and I'll probably find out for sure) that the program generates the asp code solely based on the tables. I'm still a little fuzzy on how one does custom screen design but I guess that will become clearer as the 30 days progress.

Any other thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks again.

[grovelli]

Is it possible to pull this off without writing a single line in ASP or ASP.Net?

[Carol W.]

grovelli,

Good question! I was wondering the same thing myself but I think the answer is going to turn out to be "No". It stands to reason that web browsers need to be able to interpret user input responses and hence the need for asp (or maybe php -- I don't know the difference between the two).

Hopefully, one of the gurus will come along with an answer.

[JohnH]

Wendell,
Apparently, the only objects that the demo Access mdb file contains is tables. I conclude (and I'll probably find out for sure) that the program generates the asp code solely based on the tables.

When you put an Access Application on a website , none of the Access forms, reports , macros or VBA code can be reused. So if you have some of them already ASP Maker has no use for them. Some queries can still be used.

ASP Maker writes the ASP code for you. ASP code generates HTML on the fly, and it is this HTML code that users see as the forms.
So the forms you get with ASP Maker have some similarity with the automatically generated forms that Access can make. What I mean by that is this: Most people don't use Access automatic forms out-of-box. If they generate them, they then modify them. To do that with ASP Maker would require you to edit the code generated.

PS: I don't know much about ASP Maker. I did install it once, but did not pursue it.

[Deborahp]

I am just curious....why is it so difficult to connect an already designed access database to the web? I have this great program with menus, data entry screens, tons of queries and reports and I can not use it.
Why?????

[JohnH]

Everything on the web is written in HTML, so that it can be seen/used within a web browser.

An Access application is not written in HTML. It needs to run inside Access instead.

[HansV]

It's an entirely different situation.

With a database on a local or network disk, you're running Access on your PC and loading the database into your PC's memory. You can't do that with a database that's out there somewhere on a web server. You need a different mechanism to communicate with the tables in the database over the internet. ASP is one of those mechanisms.

[Deborahp]

I understand the requirements for the web to work.
I guess my problem is just attaching the database to the web in HTML or .asp or .net and then running it.
There is an access runtime version....it seems that I could just connect the runtime to some code and then use it.

[HansV]

The runtime version of Access is simply Access itself with all design capability disabled. It can only work with a database that is directly accessible, i.e. on a local hard disk or on a shared network drive.
A database is not directly accessible over the internet, you need some kind of protocol to "talk" with it. Thet's where HTML and ASP come in.

[Deborahp]

OK....Help me to understand that.
If I connect to our intranet using ASP...then all my forms and switchboard, etc are unusable. So, basically, I just use the tables. Correct?
If not correct, how do I connect the database's switchboard using asp?

[HansV]

You can only use the tables, and probably the queries if they don't use custom VBA functions.
ASP doesn't "see" the forms and reports in the database. They will have to be recreated as web pages.

[petern]

I have some experience about 3 years ago using ASP Maker and found it relatively straightfoward to use if you have a good understanding of Access and you like to figure out how stuff works. Only your data would be in Access. All forms (and even queries if I remember correctly) would have to be redone in ASP Maker as John has pointed out. You also need a web server service package that can handle ASP (or PHP the same company has a PHP maker product). In short, all Access would be is a data storage mechanism. All of the front end functionality you are used in a local or networked application is gone.

There is definitely a learning curve and if you table design is complex you will be spending a lot of time tweaking things. In my case, it was a useful learning experience, but we decided not to pursue it. I'm still on the ASP Maker emailing list and they have continued to upgrade and add functionality to the product.

Something to consider if you are not in a hurry is to look at Access 2010 which is in beta now. I have seen a couple of videos that Hans has pointed to either here or previously on Woody's Lounge and they have built in uploading capacities to web pages. Not sure at all how it works (or even whether it works!), but certainly worth investigating.

Having just taking my first very simple foray into designing a website, it is a whole different set of tools and anything more than a simple database will be more work than you think. Depends on how much you like a challenge.

[Carol W.]

Petern,

Thank you for your reply. Based on others' responses, I had pretty much figured out that ASP Maker would generate asp pages based on my tables and that everything else in my mdb file would be ignored. I would then need to modify the generated asp code for any customization. Since my users are used to very customized forms and reports, I would need to come up to speed on the asp language itself.

In my searching, I had seen references to Access 2010's ability to upload to a website using its Sharepoint Services (??). Through one non-profit for which I do work, I do have the ability to obtain Office 2010 Professional Plus at no cost. However, non-profit #2 (the one in question) is not eligible for this upgrade.

Deborahp,
I share your frustration at not being able to deploy a fully functional (needless to say "very well written") application to a website.

Thanks again.

[JohnH]

In theory you could imagine that the Linked Table Manager in Access might allow you to designate links to tables on a remote web server.

However, with Access the server has a completely passive role. The server just stores the file(s) with the data. All the work is done on the desktop. When you run a query, all the data is sent to your computer and the correct records are selected by your computer.

For the web, you want the server to play an active role. You want the queries executed on the server so that only the relevant data is sent to each person. I can think of at least two reasons for this: security and speed.

With ASP the queries execute on the server.

[Wendell]

In my searching, I had seen references to Access 2010's ability to upload to a website using its Sharepoint Services (??). Through one non-profit for which I do work, I do have the ability to obtain Office 2010 Professional Plus at no cost. However, non-profit #2 (the one in question) is not eligible for this upgrade.

I recently sat through a presentation where a database was published to the web via Sharepoint, and it went pretty quickly. There are some things that can't be done with that approach, but all in all it produced a pretty usable interface in a web browser. As I noted previously, it seems to work pretty well for modest sized database, but storing large databases in Sharepoint lists is likely to be pretty sluggish. Design changes are a bit trickier, as you have to make the changes in Access, and then republish the database. I presume you have a situation where some users might be editing data using Access forms, and generating Access reports, and others would want to at least view data in a web browser, and perhaps edit that data as well. One factor that I don't have a good feel for is cost - I've been led to believe that the Foundation is inexpensive, but if you go to Standard or Enterprise it gets expensive. I also understand that Microsoft will be providing some sort of hosted Sharepoint services. Sharepoint 2010 is being officially launched today, so hopefully more details will be available shortly.

[Carol W.]

I presume you have a situation where some users might be editing data using Access forms, and generating Access reports, and others would want to at least view data in a web browser, and perhaps edit that data as well.

Wendell,

No. All users would be editing / adding / deleting records using a web browser.

The more I think about this, the more I think Access 2010 via Sharepoint 2010 Services might be the way to go, providing the cost is reasonable. We are currently paying the commercial service $125 (US) per month, with an annual increase pretty much assured. Also, if we go over 500 members (we currently have 399), the price point gets bumped up. Anything we can do for less than $125 per month (factoring in startup costs such as purchasing a domain) would be preferable.

I found this web host that supports Sharepoint 2010 and Access Services. I plan on contacting them today regarding price and other issues.

[Wendell]

Hi Carol,

Here's another company claiming to offer those kind of services. Also note that as I understand it, you need the SharePoint 2010 Server version (formerlly know as MOSS), and that's expensive from either of those companies. It's not clear to me how they hope to compete with ASP.net solutions (which we use at several clients) with that kind of price. You can get respectable hosting from several large companies where you pay $25 to $100 a month and can host that sort of thing. Another option that occurs to me is .NET NUKE which you can read about at http://www.dotnetnuke.com/. I'll PM you with an example site that uses it.

[Deborahp]

OK. Just let me ask this...
Why is 2003 there is a feature to create Data Access Pages? I have looked at them and well, I am having issues with getting them to allow me to add data. I guess, if MS has such a great program, Access, why limit it? I have been reading and researching and I realized that I will have to create .asp script to link my database to the intranet. It will take some time to develop my user friendly forms there. It just seems with the access pages I could create them and then run everything off of a link on my intranet site...Why am I having such an issue with accepting the fact that I have to give up my customized database????
As my dad would tell me....quit beating a dead horse!