On 29 Mar 2002 at 13:19, Andrew Rogers wrote:

> I have a very large MS Access Database system (lots of tables that
> aren't too big) broken into multiple front end and backend MDBs.
>
> Eventually Access is not going to perform satisfactorily so I need to
> upsize.

I suspect this will be a lot quicker, and on a lot smaller client then you might
suspect.

> I only want to maintain one front end system (Access or VB probably)
> which can attach to two backend systems: 1. Access MDBs (they work
> great for our smaller clients) and 2. Firebird (or some other SQL
> server)

Your nearly doubling the overall amount of work you need to do, in that every time
for the life of the project you have to do most maintenance work twice. So your
either going to have to do a lot more work, or have the workers who come after you,
cursing your name for the life of the project. Considering that Firebird has a very
small memory footprint, and you get multi-user for free, it's worth it to use FB for all
clients big and small.

ODBC and Access/VB depends on the driver, if you pick the open source Firebird
driver, it may or may not work, but there are other options, there are ADO/DB
drivers check www.ibphoenix.com or www.cvalde.com to see what's available
currently. VB has two notable problems,

1) every version uses a different syntax

2) if you have more then one programmer, well, pass on it unless your also into
dental surgery without anesthetic.....

Paul
Paul Schmidt
Tricat Technologies
paul@...
www.tricattechnologies.com