MS SQL Server question

Databases
1

My office is (finally) migrating from an MS Access database solution for our website to MS SQL Server.

Currently, a lot of content owners update their pages by opening the MDB file in the Access desktop interface, then adding rows of data. My question is, with MS SQL Server, do you still have a database file that can be edited without the user knowing SQL (i.e. is there some sort of interface) or will there be some other way to update the data (like importing Excel files, or the old Access MDB files)?

Other than Access, I only have MySQL experience, so I have no idea how MS SQL even works.

2

no

it works a lot like mysql, which has no file that you can open either

3

What you can do is “upsize” your existing access app to sql server and they might still be able to use the same UI now pointing at sql server. But access and MSSQL are very, very different beasts and I wouldn’t expect the same tools and workflows to work necessarily.

4

I sort of figured that.

Yep, I knew about the upsizing, but I didn’t know how involved it was, or if users could still maintain an Access MDB file that we could “upsize” as a way of importing.

But your second sentence is a little spooky :wink:

I also expect I’ll have to “tweak” some of my web page queries, to “de-Access” them (like getting rid of those countless parens).

5

it’s not really that difficult

the parens can stay, and also the square brackets for delimiting table/column names

some of the functions will need minor adjustment

6

You can use Access as a front-end client to ms sql server by creating an Access Data Project. You can use Access forms, reports, etc operating on your sql server database backend.

7

I actually don’t have any square brackets in my queries, so I think I’m in good shape.

Good info Doug, thanks.