Hi everyone. I need some advice for the best approach to this solution. We have members on our access database. At the moment we input all registrations manually on the database...uuuggghhh....exactly! Firstly, I need to upgrade to SQL Server 2000. Can this
be done through wizards so that we can house this on the internet efficiently? Also, we would like for our members to register (and of course pay) online while at the same time submitting their details such as name, address and membership preferences etc.
We also need pretty much all membership data (and some company data) to be available to our Windows Forms for administrative reasons and also available to privileged members via the web for search, find and viewing reasons. I assume it is not good practice
to have two sets of the same data but I may be wrong. So would I be correct in assuming that the best solution will be to use a Distributed Application approach? If so, can anyone point me to good examples? If not, what are my other options? Excuse me if this
sounds naive but I am trying to get the development model correct from the start. Thanks in advance!
>>I need to upgrade to SQL Server 2000. Can this be done through wizards so that we can house this on the internet efficiently? You can easily create a DTS package to import your data and table structure from Access to SQL Server. >>So would I be
correct in assuming that the best solution will be to use a Distributed Application approach? Do you host your website or do you use a 3rd party? If you host it, then you can set your DMZ up with the correct firewall rules and both internet and WinForms
apps can use the same database.
Thanks for the reply. No we do not host it. We buy space from a third party hosting company for the internet part. Can you offer any further thoughts reagarding this? Thanks again.
>>No we do not host it. In this case your webserver is offsite and you can't change that. So, I see 2 options: 1) You can host a webserver on your network (in a DMZ) that is exposed to the internet, can access your private database and provides Web Services
that your website can use to fulfill its' data needs. 2) Add a replicated database server to your offsite web hosting. You can then replicate the data to the offsite server nightly. Option #2 is probably the nicest (and fastest), but has a couple drawbacks:
First, if you need realtime changes to your data then you most likely cannot use this scenario. Second, a copy of your data exists outside of your companies "control", so if the data is sensitive this might be a security issue. Option #1 gives you more control
over the data, but at the expense of speed. When a request comes into the webserver it then will need to query your other webserver and retrieve the data. This is an expensive call because it is over the internet. In the end you'll have to weight the pros
and cons of both situations and decide which is right for your company. Perhaps others can offer suggestions, but these are the 2 that I'm familiar with. Hope that helps, Smoke
ElCapitan
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Looking for a model solution
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rsmoke21
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Re: Looking for a model solution
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ElCapitan
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Re: Looking for a model solution
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rsmoke21
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Re: Looking for a model solution
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ElCapitan
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Re: Looking for a model solution
Dec 13, 2004 04:36 PM|LINK