Hi all,

I am very new to databases but I have been doing my best.

My goal is to write a database for my real estate appraisal firm that can be accessed from a local intranet by two office workers who will need to view/enter/edit records and by about 10 appraisers who only need to view (query) records.

I would like for all of the data to be stored on my server and the front end to be available over the intranet in a browser (with no additional software installed on my employees computers).

I thought MS Access 2010 would be the answer to my problems so I took the time and learned Access. I built my DB, including forms and queries. It was then that I realized I could not deploy the DB the way I wanted. It wasn't a complete waste of time because it taught me some fundamentals, some SQL, and at the very least I have a map of how I would like my tables and queries to look.

I moved on to what I thought would be the answer to my problems, SQL Server 2008. I've read some about SQL Server and plaed around with the software. I've gone through Train Signals Video on SQL Server and I still don't understand how data is input into the system! Where is the end user interface?

I feel like I'm spinning my wheels, if anyone could point me in the right direction or towards a software that would fulfill my criteria I would really appreciate it. Thanks in advance!

Frank

If you like SQL Server and Access, you can use Access to build all of your forms/reports and store all of your data in SQL Server.

Thanks Teddy, but using Access for the front end would require all of the client machines to have Access installed, correct? If there was a way to avoid that, I could simply use my Access DB that I have already created.

Yes it would. There is a redistributable package for Access as well. I don't have any personal experience with it.

How much are you looking to invest in this application? Who is going to be responsible for creating and maintaining it? It may be that the cost of Access is well under the cost of developing a proper solution in another platform/language.

If you have time, you could always go the .NET route...


Or, alternately, if ALL your users will EVER need to do is look at raw tables, you could just load them up with the SQL Server client tools and give them access to just the tables they're supposed to be allowed to modify.

for 2 data entry and 10 view only bog standard Access will handle that easily

again it s alocla intranent so you shouldn't have any problems with JET over a network or VPS.

depending on what version of Access the runtime version can be free of charge, looks like its 2007 and later.

however if you want to run in more than one office (two physically distant locations over the internet then JET may well choke.

there isno reason why with carefull dsign you cannot make it run happily but you may need to chaneg the back end datastore and you may need to rewrite large chunks of hte application to suit the server client model

I would use SQLite which is free and have many free graphical interfaces as well.

Check it out here:

SQLite Home Page

Looking at your post and comments it seems to me that my software - WhizBase - would be a perfect solution for you. It works perfectly with Access databases (from Access 2.0 to Access 2010) it is a server-side scripting language, which means that client computers need nothing but web browser to use WBSP pages, it runs on many Windows based web servers (including Apache, IIS, Xitami, Abyss), making WBSP pages can hardly be called a programming, and you will be able to produce useful results in first attempt.
We provide excellent support even to users of free trial version, so I sincerely recommend you to download and try WhizBase.
Hope this will help,
Faik