Data Replication

[Ray]

Hi,

I have an Access 97 Database on the server, which gets updated from Desktops
thru a LAN. Employees who have to go to offsite locations, carry the latest
copy of the MDB. At the end-of-the day when they return to the office or
they send the copy of the MDB, the Laptop version (with their current
entries) has to be synchronized with the
MDB sitting on the server. How do I go about setting up this?

I would appreciate suggestions from anyone who has had experience in doing
this sort of a thing.

Thanking in Advance,

Ray

[David W. Fenton]

"Ray" <No**************@Yahoo.com.HK> wrote in
news:2v*************@uni-berlin.de:

I have an Access 97 Database on the server, which gets updated
from Desktops thru a LAN. Employees who have to go to offsite
locations, carry the latest copy of the MDB. At the end-of-the day
when they return to the office or they send the copy of the MDB,
the Laptop version (with their current entries) has to be
synchronized with the MDB sitting on the server. How do I go
about setting up this?

I would appreciate suggestions from anyone who has had experience
in doing this sort of a thing.

Well, replication is OK in this scenario if your users connect
directly to the LAN. They can just open their local replicas on
their laptops and go to TOOLS | REPLICATION and synchronize with the
shared replica on the server.

A few points:

1. for anything other than a 10BaseT LAN connection or higher,
direct replication (i.e., through the Access menu) is probably fine.
It's not at *all* safe over any lower bandwidth or over a wireless
connection.

2. don't copy replicas around via the file system. Use them in place
on the laptops and synchronize when they are back in the office.
Once they are on the LAN, they can then use the shared replica on
the server. You say "or they send the copy of the MDB." That is
WRONG and will eventually lead to corruption of your replica set and
data loss.

Spend some time on http://www.trigeminal.com reading the replication
articles (which explain all of this) and then spend some time
reading the archives of microsoft.public.access.replication. You'll
see that 40% or more of the articles on that newsgroup are by
Michael Kaplan. Once you've read Michael's articles, you'll see that
this is A Good Thing.

Post back here with questions, or post them in the replication
newsgroup.

For what it's worth, I used to do lots of replication work, but now
prefer solving the same set of problems with Windows Terminal
Server, instead. Replication was simply too fragile for implementing
reliable data exchange in the kinds of environments my clients were
working in.

--
David W. Fenton http://www.bway.net/~dfenton
dfenton at bway dot net http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc

[Ray]

David,

Thanks for your reply. As I am new to replication, I have a number of
queries for you.

1. The clients should synchronize their local replicas with shared
replica on the server. I believe they should synchronize with master design
database. Could you please give me some explanation about the meaning and
differences between shared replica and local replica.

2. ..don't copy replicas around via the file system. Since the master
design database cannot be moved to other area, the replicas must be moved to
the notebook computers in reality. How can we accomplish it?

Thanks for your suggested reading. I will spend sometime to read them all
in order to understand the replication in greater depth.

Ray
"David W. Fenton" <dX********@bway.net.invalid> wrote in message
news:Xn**********************************@24.168.1 28.86...

"Ray" <No**************@Yahoo.com.HK> wrote in
news:2v*************@uni-berlin.de:

I have an Access 97 Database on the server, which gets updated
from Desktops thru a LAN. Employees who have to go to offsite
locations, carry the latest copy of the MDB. At the end-of-the day
when they return to the office or they send the copy of the MDB,
the Laptop version (with their current entries) has to be
synchronized with the MDB sitting on the server. How do I go
about setting up this?

I would appreciate suggestions from anyone who has had experience
in doing this sort of a thing.

Well, replication is OK in this scenario if your users connect
directly to the LAN. They can just open their local replicas on
their laptops and go to TOOLS | REPLICATION and synchronize with the
shared replica on the server.

A few points:

1. for anything other than a 10BaseT LAN connection or higher,
direct replication (i.e., through the Access menu) is probably fine.
It's not at *all* safe over any lower bandwidth or over a wireless
connection.

2. don't copy replicas around via the file system. Use them in place
on the laptops and synchronize when they are back in the office.
Once they are on the LAN, they can then use the shared replica on
the server. You say "or they send the copy of the MDB." That is
WRONG and will eventually lead to corruption of your replica set and
data loss.

Spend some time on http://www.trigeminal.com reading the replication
articles (which explain all of this) and then spend some time
reading the archives of microsoft.public.access.replication. You'll
see that 40% or more of the articles on that newsgroup are by
Michael Kaplan. Once you've read Michael's articles, you'll see that
this is A Good Thing.

Post back here with questions, or post them in the replication
newsgroup.

For what it's worth, I used to do lots of replication work, but now
prefer solving the same set of problems with Windows Terminal
Server, instead. Replication was simply too fragile for implementing
reliable data exchange in the kinds of environments my clients were
working in.

--
David W. Fenton http://www.bway.net/~dfenton
dfenton at bway dot net http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc