Really want to use MS Access DB on a Linux Server

[scaiferw]

I'm developing a website on a volunteer basis for an service club organization.

Having dabbled in ASP, I've turned my effors to PHP as I think it's a more portable skill, and am teaching myself as I go. So far I think I'm doing pretty well developing on my home server (Win200 Pro / IIS / PHP) against an MS-Access database.

The problem is that my server does not appear to support an MS-Access database. I have a couple of reasons for wanting to stick with Access.

1) I have my hands full learning PHP and developing this website, I really don't have time to figure out MySQL, which is the server option presented.

2) I like the portability of Access. I can backup the database to my own machine with a simple scheduled FTP job, and I can easily work with or distrubute the data using standard office suites from MS and Corel.

3) As my database evolves during development, It's easy to tweak the MS Access database, I'm not confident it would be so easy to tweak a MySQL database.

3) At least for the time being, Access is doing everything I want it to - "If it aint broke, don't fix it."

I do want to learn MySQL when the time comes, but I really don't want to have to drop everything and get up to speed with it now.

Having said all that, is there some way to make my linux server (some specs below) talk to an Access .mdb database file?

Many thanks,

Rob

Server Specs: (not sure which flavour)
Operating system: Linux
Kernel version: 2.4.30-gator_r1
Apache version: 1.3.33 (Unix)

[felgall]

If your server isn't running Windows then you can't use Access.

mySQL uses the same "structured query language" for accessing the database as Access does.

[TechEvangelist]

Install PHPMyAdmin to help manage MySQL from an interface. It's free, easy to install and easy to use. You can find it at:

http://www.phpmyadmin.net/

[\\.\]

I cant quote the source because it is in a forum on line but theirs a problem with usning an MSACCESS data source, the more records the slower it gets, the source of the discussion found that M$ database slowed down when it reached the 10,000 records mark where as MySQL showed no slowing down even at the 1,000,000 records mark.

So do yourself a favour, change.

[scaiferw]

I cant quote the source because it is in a forum on line but theirs a problem with usning an MSACCESS data source, the more records the slower it gets, the source of the discussion found that M$ database slowed down when it reached the 10,000 records mark where as MySQL showed no slowing down even at the 1,000,000 records mark.

So do yourself a favour, change.

I've now made the switch, and have left MS Access far, far behind.

Another critical issue with Access is that as a multi-user database, it really blows. Badly. Once more than one user tries to access it at the same time, forget it.

[TechEvangelist]

The real problem is that it is a desktop database and is not intended for use as a multi-user database on a web server. I have seen it slow to a crawl with about 30 to 40 users in a dynamic site.

[felgall]

It is surprising really that Access is as popular as it is - must be something to do with the way Microsoft have priced it.

When you consider what can be done with Microsotf Excel and what can be done with Microsoft SQL Server and the overlap between the two, there isn't really any room in there for there to be any need for Microsoft Access. Access overlaps the top end of Excel and the bottom end of SQL Server and doesn't really provide any advantage over using one or the other or both of those other programs.