It seems I need a wizard just to figure how I need to deploy my future
database.

I’ve developed a number of RDBMS apps over the years using Paradox but now I
must create a new app using MSAccess. I’ve been reading Jennings “Using
Access 2003” and numerous web sites and find conflicting information I cannot
resolve.

I work at a university medical school and need to create a clinical database
of patients. This subspecialty division will never have more the 10 people
accessing the db, mostly non-concurrent, and might have 5000-15000 patients
to track - max. The university has a strong VPN and plenty of wired and
wireless opportunities to connect throughout the campus. I can easily get
server space and we have a school contract with MS for very inexpensive
software. All machines have XP Pro and use Access 2003. (I’d like to use
wireless Tablets in the future too.) Not sure the server OS.

I’m getting very confused determining whether I should use Access Jet for
the back end, or MSDE 2000 (or 2003 w/SP3) or SQLServer 2003. Should I stay
with Jet or use ADP? Security is an issue. At first I determined MSDE would
be the optimal solution for me but now I read elsewhere plain old Jet is
wonderful, reliable, and speedy for up to 25 users.

Very little documentation talk about flexibility to add and link tables
after the original app has been upsized since I expect a considerable amount
of modification after implementation. I expect a lot of tweaking
forms/reports and adding fields ongoing.

I read about a great number of tradeoffs between using Jet or ADP which, as
a new user, seem unusual to me - many queries need to be rewritten and many
forms don’t transfer well after upsizing.

I would like a solution that allows me the most iterative development
flexibility. I work from home, where I can access the VPN, and would like to
send new front ends to the users easily and work on the back end remotely.

Would it be better to have the forms on the server too and not worry about
delivering new forms to each user separately?

TIA
philr