Macs and PCs

I've been asked to design a database for up to 60 concurrent users. The
awkward side of it is that the company in question use a mixture of Macs
(OSX) and PCs (XP) attached to an OSX Mac network. There will be around
50,000 records altogether.

I'd like to make an Access database so one solution would be some sort of PC
emulation software on the Macs. Alternatively, perhaps I could get
FileMakerPro on the Macs to read an Access back-end database (or some other
database format that both packages can read).

If anyone out there has been down this road before, I would very much
welcome any ideas. Also, will 50,000 records make a typical Access database
too slow for comfort?

Thanks.

On Mon, 13 Dec 2004 05:31:07 -0800, Martin
wrote:

I've been asked to design a database for up to 60 concurrent users. The
awkward side of it is that the company in question use a mixture of Macs
(OSX) and PCs (XP) attached to an OSX Mac network. There will be around
50,000 records altogether.

I'd like to make an Access database so one solution would be some sort of PC
emulation software on the Macs. Alternatively, perhaps I could get
FileMakerPro on the Macs to read an Access back-end database (or some other
database format that both packages can read).

If anyone out there has been down this road before, I would very much
welcome any ideas. Also, will 50,000 records make a typical Access database
too slow for comfort?

50,000,000 records is probably getting too big for Access; 5,000,000
would take careful tuning; 50,000 is a snap.

However - the Mac involvement is a big sticking point. Access and
FileMaker Pro are NOT friendly to one another; even importing data is
a major chore, and AFAIK there is no simple way to link them.

PC emulation is one possibility, though it can cause a substantial
performance hit. Another option you might want to consider is to use a
web browser interface to an Access (or MSDE, the version of SQL that
comes with Access 2000 and later) backend.

John W. Vinson[MVP]
Join the online Access Chats
Tuesday 11am EDT - Thursday 3:30pm EDT
http://community.compuserve.com/msdevapps

On Mon, 13 Dec 2004 11:56:08 -0700, John Vinson
wrote:

However - the Mac involvement is a big sticking point. Access and
FileMaker Pro are NOT friendly to one another; even importing data is
a major chore, and AFAIK there is no simple way to link them.

PC emulation is one possibility, though it can cause a substantial
performance hit.

It also makes it much harder to exchange data with Mac applications, if
that's a consideration.

Another option you might want to consider is to use a
web browser interface to an Access (or MSDE, the version of SQL that
comes with Access 2000 and later) backend.

It may also be worth checking out 4th Dimension (www.4d.com), which is
less alien than FileMaker and works on both Mac and Windows.

--
John Nurick [Microsoft Access MVP]

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