We are looking to have about 35-40 people writing to an access database via script on a shared drive. The metrics break down to them needed to write about 3-7 times an hour. Would Access support this without going ape on me.
Yes I would love to use this as a SQL server but that means going through massive amounts of red tape/meetings paperwork etc that I would prefer not to bother with
Could you not make them go with the free edition of SQL Server Express without the red tape?
In answer to your question, though, I've seen Access give big problems in environments with this many users, although that was pre 2007. I dunno how much it has changed.
If it were me, I'd avoid Access at all cost.
Could it? Yes. If you are very careful and perform locking and ensure that nobody steps on anybody else. Access is really not designed for any form of concurrency. I know of one place that managed to make it work in a very concurrent environment, but that environment basically logged everything and if the DB clobbered itself, it'd restore from the last backup and replay against the Access file automatically, so that the failures were transparent. I would not recommend following that course of action...
Should you do it? No. Is there any reason that you cannot use something like PostgreSQL or MySQL?
It's iffy. The first time the database crashes you'll wish you went with SQL Server Express. And it will crash, eventually.
In my previous job we had a product with an Access database backend. We had some clients with 25 users. We refused clients who had 40 potential users because we knew from experience that the database would corrupt itself on a regular basis, and performance would be unacceptable.
The day we went to SQL Server Express, the performance of the application doubled, and the problems with crashing and corruption virtually disappeared.
I would avoid access too. Have you every thought about sql ce. It should handle multi users better and it is file just like access.
7 * 40 = 280 per hour.
280 / 60 = 4,6 per mins.
If your script is light, and if you don't read results too often, maybe... Of course I don't recommand you to try. Meetings time! ;)
Yes, it would work. No, it's not a good idea.
Access would be able to handle the load, as long as those 35-40 people aren't all trying to access the database at once. It'll quickly bog down when you start having more than a couple of concurrent users, particularly if those users are all trying to update something.
The problem is that isn't not safe. You need to have the entire database file accessible on a network share, where any users will be able to write to it. You'll have multiple instances of Access trying to read and modify the file at the same time, and unless you are very careful with locking, it's quite possible for the database to become damaged or corrupt.
You'll also never be able to add any kind of access control beyond basic file permissions. You might not need it now, but internal databases often end up needing to be exposed to the wider world somehow.
It's not worth it. There are plenty of real RDBMS systems out there, for free, that are designed to handle this kind of thing. Why spend time trying to make Access work in such an environment, when you could just install SQL Server Express and be done with it? It has limitations, but if you're seriously considering Access, you're never going to be anywhere near those. Or use MySQL, PostgreSQL, Firebird...
If the connections are opened only as long as needed to run the scripts, and you use transactions and have some retry logic built in when there's a conflict, there really oughtn't be too much of an issue.
If your script takes 1 second to do its update (that's a pretty long time in computer/database terms, of course), and there are 280 updates per hour, if you were lucky enough that no two users simultaneously ran their scripts, you would still have 3,320 seconds when the database was not open.
I don't see an issue, assuming that you know how to properly manage your connections and manage your Jet transactions.
That volume is not a problem for Access so long as it's on a stable LAN or very high speed WAN. Wireless connections are also a bad idea.
I have several clients which are adding about 200K to 300K transactions per year into the systems. So that's about 1000 per work day. That's using both an Access front end and back end.
That said one of them will be upsizing shortly to SQL Server. I fired the other client when they hired a PHB (Dilbert's pointy haired boss.)