Link Access-tables from SharePoint 2010

Question

Hi guys,

I've got a couple of colleagues who love Access and have lots of important business data in Access. I'm never going to persuade them to move the data to SharePoint 2010, nor am I going to have them move over to SharePoint. They're using Access, preferably even Access 2003, but I might persuade them to use 2007.

This business data is great data, and I want to integrate it in my SharePoint 2010 applications. It's also data that's changing often, so doing a single export every now and then is not an option. Also, my application would make changes in the data.

That's why I need SharePoint to interface the .mdb files. My SharePoint 2010 server has access to the files, so that's fine. But how do I make a list in SharePoint 2010 where the data are coming from Access? Do I have to make a BDC file? If so, how should I define it for an Access file? Are there any wizards I can use? Do the solutions offer read/write access, or only read-only like BDC was with SharePoint 2007?

Cheers

Nik

Answer 1

My suggestion is that you need to win their hearts and minds.... do you have the time, and resource, to show them the many benefits of bringing the data into Sharepoint?

Answer 2

• There is external lists feature (read/write to external data source) in SharePoint 2010, try if it works with Access database source.
• There also appears to be Access Services in SharePoint 2010 which provide ability to user access database forms and reports in browser.