Multi-User Data App Architecture

[Matt Fielder]

I'm working on converting my application from a single user, to a
multi-user. The current architecture is with an MSDE data back end
(switching to SQLExpress soon, but not quite yet). Each user connects to
the database directly - the connection string is stored encrypted in a local
file, and all settings etc. are stored in the database. The problem is it
seems that this could rapidly run into problems with scalability and
security. The other issue is there are some files such as image files that
are stored in the local file system and what is stored in the database is a
path to the file. For example, if UserA add an image to a record, then
UserB opens that record, they won't be able to see the image as the file is
actually on UserA's machine. Any direction in where to go with this would
be appreciated.

[Kevin Yu [MSFT]]

Hi Matt,

I think both are fine but all depends on your real application. If the
images are frequently read/write, it would be better to put them in file,
which will reduce the work load for the database engine. But it will
require a little more work for creating the file structure for storing
these images.

It would be good if you can use remoting or web service techniques to unify
the access to the database. Because it will be more efficient and more
secure.

You can check the following link for more information on .NET remoting.

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/kwdt6w2k.aspx

If anything is unclear, please feel free to let me know.

Kevin Yu
Microsoft Online Community Support
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