Access™ 2007 Bible

Chapter 31. Using the Access Replication Features

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Understanding database replication

• Creating a replication Design Master

• Creating replica databases

• Synchronizing data between replicas

• Synchronizing design changes between replicas

• Studying VBA code to perform replication operations

In most up-to-date offices, Access database users are working on a number of different computer systems, but their computers are connected in a local area network (LAN). Because of the network users can share a single copy of an Access .mdb file located on a file server. In this kind of setup, problems arising from out-of-date data and simultaneous changing of data by multiple users are rare. As long as the appropriate locking scheme has been implemented by the developer and all users are trained in what to do in the event of locked records, little can go wrong.

However, the situation is not so simple in companies where some people need to run Access applications on portable computers, or in company offices so geographically distributed that it's impossible to link all copies of an Access database with a LAN. In these situations, synchronizing the data managed by the "roving" Access applications with the "stationary" copies in the main office can be a daunting task. A laptop user virtually always has a complete copy of the database on their computer and makes changes directly to the mobile database. Later on, these changes have to be synchronized with the stationary database located on the company's ...