gazfocus Posted April 1, 2011 Share Posted April 1, 2011 Is this possible? I have a friend that runs his business using a Microsoft Access Database. The database (as far as I can tell) stores the details of all their customers, products and orders. My friend wants a new website with a shopping cart that will connect to the Microsoft Access Database so that any orders from the website get downloaded to the database, etc. Is this possible? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doug G Posted April 1, 2011 Share Posted April 1, 2011 It's easy enough to connect to an access db from a windows web server. My recommendation is you do not use Access as a web db for a shopping cart unless you want to deal with a potential security nightmare. Access is a file-based db and unless you set up everything exactly right you may be offering your db for download to the first hacker that comes by. Use a real database server like mysql, mssql, oracle, etc which has many more ways to keep your data safe from prying eyes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gazfocus Posted April 1, 2011 Author Share Posted April 1, 2011 It's easy enough to connect to an access db from a windows web server. My recommendation is you do not use Access as a web db for a shopping cart unless you want to deal with a potential security nightmare. Access is a file-based db and unless you set up everything exactly right you may be offering your db for download to the first hacker that comes by. Use a real database server like mysql, mssql, oracle, etc which has many more ways to keep your data safe from prying eyes. Thanks for your post. I think I was abit unclear earlier. My friend has an access database on his PC with all his customer details, product details and order information. He wants a shopping cart that can pull the product and customer info from the access database and when orders are made, store them on the access database (or at least a way to sync the 2 databases maybe twice a day). What would be the best way to do this? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adam Posted April 4, 2011 Share Posted April 4, 2011 It's possible, but I wouldn't recommend it if your web server runs on a Unix machine. This is because Unix servers lack the drivers to be able to communicate with the Access database, and so a more cumbersome solution is needed; and possibly access to the server's configuration. If you're running Windows however, this should be straight-forward enough. Personally I wouldn't recommend using an Access database for a web application though, it's not what it's aimed at. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muddy_Funster Posted April 20, 2011 Share Posted April 20, 2011 I would dump access altogether (but then again I have a strong personal hatred for the program ). It's not going to be long before the database is taking ages to load, query and update. Access is bad. Just use the database that is running on the server for the information required. Export the access database to a csv file and import it into the database used by the shopping cart. Most shopping carts have pretty good customer management as well as obvious product management facilities. If there is anything clever being done in the Access database it should be easily replicated by custom PHP pages querying the cart database. Failing that, I suggest that your friend get MS SQL Server (2005/2008). The express edition should be free (although it has some limitations it should still be more capable than Access) which can then be linked vie ODBC (assuming that level of access is available on the server) to the cart database and synced using scheduled tasks. Just my thoughts. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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