Forum Moderators: mack
I'm running an ecommerce ASP site with Access 2000. At present all orders, customer updates etc. are recorded to the database which I view in a backend section online. The actual order processing (ie invoicing, returns etc.) are handled on a 3rd party Lotus application stored locally. Obviously this is a huge waste of time as there is absolutely no communication between the 2 databases and I am having to retype everything into the Lotus app that has already been input by the customers. This wasn't a problem to begin with but as traffic and sales are increasing (thanks to WW in a large way), I am finding that I am spending my entire time retyping.
I would like to get rid of the Lotus app completely and transform the backend online to handle all the aspects of order processing, mailing list management etc.
My question is basically, am I missing any obvious alternatives or pitfalls?
Many thanks to you all.
Alternatively you could have all your backoffice stuff done via ASP on the site. One thing to watch out for is if you stick with Access, you may start running into scalability problems due to the additional backoffice processing. HTH.
I think I understand what you mean by scalabilty but could you just clarify slightly. Need to make sure I am clear before I embark as it's going to be alot of work whatever happens.
Many thanks
This is because it's a file-based database. Everything goes on in the file, there's nothing there to make sure the file is ok.
Database servers like SQL Server and MySQL are, well, servers ;) that are running all the time as a process, and this process looks after the locking, file access, timeouts etc.
As your site gets busier you may notice page requests timing out or never appearing - this would suggest that Access isn't up to the job. However, it is generally relatively straightfoward (slightly wild generalisation there ;)) to upgrade from Access to another database if required, usually just tweaking the SQL queries.
Many thanks all.
