How to use database when not connected to network?

[justhininabouti]

I work for a shipping agent. They have 3 ships under their management. These vessels are crewed by employee's of the agent. The vessels only have cellular data cards that they use for internet (VPN) access. The vessels are out of cellular range about 60% of the time.

Each vessel will need to have access to the entire database at any time. However they should only be allowed to modify employee information of the employees assigned to that vessel. modifications should be propagated.

There are other details, but I will save them for later. I'm most concerned right now with data sharing/integrety.

Is there a standard way to share this information as discribed? What ideas/questions does this situation raise?

Thanks,
Mike

[Estuardo]

G'd morning Mike,
Why are you concerned with data integrity if as soon as they get out of range they loose connection the VPN goes off? This of course assuming that on each PC will be a FE that will connect to a shared network drive through the VPN. In your scenario the worst thing that can happens (besides get disconnected) is to loose the record where they were Updating/Saving/Deleting at that very moment.
With an split MS Access application, all FE's share the same BE, so changes are immediately available, no sync needed. If you are looking for a disconnected environment, you can still use MS Access as BE but you will need to implement another FE like .Net as a web/windows app.
In this case the word "Standard" is very flexible, just with the information you provide, the problem i'll be more concern is to choose a connected or disconnected environment.
G'd luck

[justhininabouti]

G'd morning Mike,
Why are you concerned with data integrity if as soon as they get out of range they loose connection the VPN goes off? This of course assuming that on each PC will be a FE that will connect to a shared network drive through the VPN. In your scenario the worst thing that can happens (besides get disconnected) is to loose the record where they were Updating/Saving/Deleting at that very moment.
With an split MS Access application, all FE's share the same BE, so changes are immediately available, no sync needed. If you are looking for a disconnected environment, you can still use MS Access as BE but you will need to implement another FE like .Net as a web/windows app.
In this case the word "Standard" is very flexible, just with the information you provide, the problem i'll be more concern is to choose a connected or disconnected environment.
G'd luck

Estuardo,

Thanks for the reply.

I need a ' disconnected environment' for the vessels, as they will need the DB available at all times, even when disconnected from the internet/VPN.

As for the idea of a .Net web/windows app as FE, this is kind of what I was thinking. I was wontering if there was an 'off the shelf'/standard way to accomplish this. I have a 'little' experience writting VB.net, so could likely (in time) put something together. I was also wondering about Sharepoint? Would this be a viable/good alternitive?


Thanks again.
Mike

[pbaldy]

Mike, I changed your thread title to something more meaningful to future users.

Hi Estuardo!

[justhininabouti]

Estuardo... Thanks!

Mike

[Estuardo]

G'd Afternoon,
Mike, I don't know all the details of your project, so i can't think of anything out of the box solution, but if you want to try you may want to consider MS LightSwitch.
About Sharepoint, this is a whole environment. Once again, i know nothing about you and your company, here we are not talking about developing an application, this is hardware, software, licenses, installation, configuration and maintenance, not to mention trained staff to administrate this server, here you will find the Hardware and software requirements for SharePoint Server 2010.
G'd Luck

Paul my dear friend, so good to see you