Creating Access Database (Access 2000)

[NCordero]

Hello fellow Access gurus,

I have a new and exciting project I would love to hear your ideas about. Long story short...I have to create a database that my department can go into and run canned reports. The data in the access tables will be linked to our sequel server. What I think I want to do is create a different switchboard for each group since each group has different reports to run. I would like to give them certain parameters before running the reports. But, I must make sure that the sequel security is carried into Access. Does anyone have any ideas as to how I should go about this project. The long term goal is to roll this database onto a web frontend and have managers of the company run their own reports.

The first stage will have approximately 20 users.

Any idea are welcomed!!!!
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[WendellB]

I'll start the ball rolling here - SQL Server security is independent of Access security, so you don't really need to do much with Access security at a table level when you are using SQL Server tables as the back-end. The unique switchboard for each group would be a bigger challenge, as the code that drives the switchboard isn't design to deal with different groups of users. It should be possible to modify the design of switchboards to do that sort of thing, but we usually use a menuing form with buttons that appear or disappear depending on what groups the user belongs to, and that is fairly straightforward in Access 2000/2002. The web front-end is a bigger issue - web projects don't typically offer the kind of reports managers are happy with, and printing from a web interface is always fraught with challenges. You are limited to a few font sizes, and every user potentially has a different printer so pagination gets to be a real pain. Never the less people are doing it with things like ASP.NET or other tools with some success. Hope this helps, and other readers will put in their <img src=/S/2cents.gif border=0 alt=2cents width=15 height=15>

[NCordero]

Thanks for your input. I'll definitely consider all of your valuable points.

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