Alison Balteramp;#039;s Mastering Microsoft Office Access 1002003 [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Proactively Preparing for Upsizing

If you set up your tables and code modules with upsizing in mind, you can eliminate many of the pitfalls discussed previously. Despite any of the problems that upsizing can bring, the scalability of Access is one of its stronger points. Sometimes resources are not available to implement client/server technology in the early stages of an application. If you think through the design of the project with the possibility of upsizing in mind, you will be pleased at how relatively easy it is to move to client/server technology when the time is right. With the Access 2003 Upsizing Wizard, which is designed to take an Access application and upsize it to Microsoft SQL Server, the process is relatively simple. The upsizing tools for Access 2003 perform a lot of the work involved in upsizing a database, with just the click of a few buttons.

NOTE

Client/server development and client/server issues are covered in extensive detail in

Alison Balter's Mastering Access 2002 Enterprise Development .

NOTE

The upsizing wizards available for Access 2000 and Access 2002 are almost identical to the Access 2003 Upsizing Wizard. They therefore afford you the same ease when upsizing from Access to SQL Server.

CAUTION

Although the upsizing tools for Access are excellent, they do have their drawbacks. For example, they do not always map the Access field type to the desired SQL Server field type. For this reason, you can opt not to use the wizards. If, despite their shortcomings, you decide to use the upsizing wizards, make sure that you carefully review both the upsizing report and the structure of each table after the wizard upsizes it.