Hey guys, im new here and am looking for answers

Firstly, i have designed a database using M$ access, it consists of multiple forms which i plan to host on an intranet website, i need to be able to add records directly from the form on the intranet website aswell as being able to edit/review current entries on forms in the database.

My question is, how would i go about integrating these forms onto the intranet website? i plan on keeping the database and the intranet site on the same directory on the same machine, maybe even on a USB flash drive for example? any ideas as to what code i should be using?

Kind Regards

Hello Balkanite and welcome to the AstaHost forums.

From your problem description there seems to either be either a small mix up of terminology or an incomplete problem description. Since what you are asking can be approached in more than one way I will try to cover them.

Forms made within the Access application will only run in Access. Access does allow, however, you to create data access pages or to save forms as data access pages that can be used on websites. Note that they will only run in Internet Explorer as they use IE specific dynamic HTML. Also the connection string on them has to be modified as the default is of the c:\folder... variety instead of //server/folder... Remember that though access can technically support 255 connections the reality is far far less. Data access pages also have the limitation of having no scalability. Thus if you decide to move to a more robust method everything has to be re-created. In truth though I work professionally developing for Access I have never used data access pages extensively as I find there are better solutions.

Given that you wish to be able to access the database via an intranet site I am going to assume you would like the data to be availible to multiple simultaneous users. There is always the option of splitting the database in a front end for all the user forms and reports and a back end for the data. Then you only need to distribute the front end to whomever needs to access the data. While this does require far more coding than selecting save as data access page the client server model is effective and stable. Also should you need to move the data from Access to something like MS SQLServer the transistion is simple. Simply change the connection string on the front end, (assuming the same data structure has been kept).

For web page options any language that uses ODBC can connect to an Access database. Thus ASP ASP.net PHP and JSP can all be used.

Don' t store a DB or web apges on a USB drive. That is only asking for problems.

I hope this borderline dissertation has been helpful in some way. Let me know of there specific questions you need answers to.

Thing is that you need a webhost that supports MS Access, which unfortunately since Astahost only offers Linux hosting, you cannot use MS Access databases. You would have to resort to SQLite or MySQL for your databasing needs. They work similar to MS Access, but they just require server access, which Astahost provides. If you truly need MS Access databases, you would want to get paid hosting at ComputingHost.

As for having your form to be able to connect to a MS Access database, just simply upload your form and your database in the same folder and use ASP to store the data into the MS Access Database that you created.

xboxrulz

You can convert your access forms to html forms manually or you can do it directly from Access, if i remember correctly with Access you can create a new data access page by using a wizard or in design mode, also you can modifcate an existing web page.

The most powerful way for this is to convert it manually, but, you will spend a lot of time in this way, so, i dont recommend it unless you need absolute control.

Best regards,

Given he is asking about an inTRAnet site I am assuming that he needs this for a smaller group, likely work related. In which case any XP machine can run IIS and to serve the pages and provide all the connectivity to the DB needed. I set up a similar system for a support department at Siebel Systems several years ago.

that is true, so you just need to setup a webserver I guess. For this case if you installed WAMP, you should be ready to go and you'll have MS Access once you install the Microsoft Jet Database Engine.

xboxrulz