Re: Access & Scaling

I write this as both a Microsoft Development Partner & as an IBM AS/400
Developer and Reseller.

Access is written to be a "personal" DBMS.  All access to Access is at the
workstation level (not at the server level).  In a multi-user LAN
environment, all access to Access is controlled by the requesting
workstation.  In a LAN environment, if you run a query over a 100,000
record file, all 100,000 records will be communicated over your LAN to the
workstation which is running the query.  This pretty much guarantees a
problem with scalability in terms of LAN utilization (at a minimum).
Corrupted databases are also a significant threat because the DBMS controls
are being executed on a different machine than the machine which is holding
the underlying data.

DB2/400 and SQL Server are both "server based" DBMS.  A query is issued to
the server, run on the server, and the results are returned to the client.
As a result, your LAN traffic is minimized & the tendency to corrupt the
database is minimized because database activity is not controlled by a
client which may show you a "blue screen of death" at any time.

Many of our customers where we installed Access based solutions in the past
are now asking for the function to be ported to DB2/400.  Their primary
reasons are stability (no corrupted files), scalability (cut LAN traffic),
and the fact that current AS/400 implementations of client database
function have been increasingly competent.

Access is good for prototyping, but DB2/400 is much better for production
systems (in my book).  There are a lot of folks out there who can build
sexy Access based demos, but don't have a clue how to create bulletproof
production systems.  This is the differentiation between a "two year wonder
ex-employee" and a "career piece of bedrock employee" of any organization.

John Myers
IBM Certified Specialist - AS/400 Technical Solutions
Strategic Business Systems, Inc.
300 Lake Street, Suite B, Ramsey, NJ 07446  USA
E-mail: mailto:jmyers@sbsusa.com   Phone: +1 (201) EASY 400   x131
Web:    http://www.sbsusa.com      Fax:   +1 (201) 327-6984

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At 12:15 PM 1/5/99 -0500, you wrote:
>It was wrote:
>>Pete, what does "not scale very well" mean?  Are we to think of one or two
>users, or 8, or 15, or 3,000?
>>
>>>They're not magic. My experience with Access has been that it doesn't
>>>scale very well. It is, however, very compatible with SQL Server. I'll
>>>bet this company is in for some stressful times.
>>>Pete Hall
>
>Forget the number users---how about number of row?!
>
>Go throw about 250,000 rows into a table and try to browse it. Result: One
>big old lazy dog!
>
>Access is like the vast majority of other MS products. Nice toys.
>
>Wynn
>
>BTW, to answer the scaling question, I would say that Access could handle 2
>users fine, 8...ehhhh...yes but with some hacking & coughing, 15? Only if
>you like long coffee breaks whilst querying; 3000? We'll never see that in
>our lifetime!
>"Uhhh, Uhhh, ..., they uh"--Lance LeRoy
>
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John Myers
IBM Certified Specialist - AS/400 Technical Solutions
Strategic Business Systems, Inc.
300 Lake Street, Suite B, Ramsey, NJ 07446  USA
E-mail: mailto:jmyers@sbsusa.com   Phone: +1 (201) EASY 400   x131
Web:    http://www.sbsusa.com      Fax:   +1 (201) 327-6984

Instant AS/400 Web Guestbooks & Surveys - WebSurvey/400
     http://www.sbsusa.com/internet/inpuzsvy.htm

Prove that your shipment got there - Proof of Delivery!
     http://www.sbsusa.com/docmgmt/dmsol4u.htm


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