I am writing a client-server application in which there is a database maintained on a home server, which will share it's data with a client-app across several computers on a home network. This mdb database consists of three tables with no more than five-columns of data in each table, and there should typically not be more than 5,000 records in total within the database. Data for the client-computers only require read access to the data and updates back to the server will not be necessary. The client-server connection will need to be constant, as the server will complete other functions/requests made by the client-apps, in addition to just the sharing of data.
I was hoping to get advice as to the best strategy to share this data with the clients across the home-network. Would it be preferable to maintain local copies of the database on each client, and synchronize any changes made to the server database, or maintain the one database on the server which would be queried across the network? Would the dependency on the network by utilizing the one database slow down the client apps and unnecessarily tie-up bandwidth across the network?
Can anyone steer me in the right direction?