A long time ago, I designed a large program / application that recorded and controlled all aspects of our manufacturing operation. At that time I placed all of the tables (we called them db's at that time) on a lan windows server, and all of the forms, querys, reports etc. were on all of the user (client) computers. I started a application much the same for a customer using Access 2010. Prior to getting started, I did some research on SharePoint lists and decided I could probably set this application up in much the same way in which the SharePoint server would host the back end (tables only), and each user would have the Access front end on their personal computers. I wanted to do this, as much of the program has been written in VBA, and I understand SharePoint does not allow for VBA.
I have now designed approx. 95% of this Access application, and am starting to think about the implications of having SharePoint host the back end. After doing some more research it appears that there are many related problems to this, and a fair amount of modifications I would have to make to the tables in order to host on SharePoint.
On this forum I read an interesting reply to a similar post. The reply was made by A S Mann, and in his reply he indicated that you could place the back end on cloud (he suggested Drop Box, I currently use Box). This sounds like an interesting option! We are a fairly small operation, probably only about 5 users, however we are all based at different locations. So my questions on this issue are:
- Is this a viable option, placing all tables on the cloud (Box), with all users having their own front end to be able to add and edit records in tables used by all?
- if so, how would I place the back end on the cloud, I cannot use the export option?
- How would my forms, querys, reports determine where to find the tables required?
- Would the tables on the cloud be updated by users as they add or edit records?
Thanks in advance to anyone that has the chance to respond to this post