Let me start by saying, I know pretty close to zilch about MS Access 
...
I was asked by a customer to take a look at updating some "custom software" that someone "wrote" for them several years previous. "We think it was written in VB", they tell me. Simple, I think to myself; just re-write it from scratch or modify it (assuming the source code is available).
As it turns out, the 'software' is actually some old version of MS Access, which they've got running on an old (physical) XP system that everyone (across several sites) just RDPs into. Only one user can access it at a time and users wishing to log into it actually phone the other sites first, to check that nobody is using it!
Understandably, they'd like to move away from this modus operandi, and they also have a wish-list of features that they'd like to add, such as generating invoices (presently, someone prints out a summary then manually transfers the relevant data into Sage to generate an invoice).
What I've managed to determine so far is that everything that is required to run this is in a single folder (named 'Quarry'). It appears to use some sort of Access runtime executable (MSARN200.EXE, I think) and, in my tests, I've found that this will run on any XP machine, regardless of whether Access is installed or not. It doesn't seem to be compatible with Windows 7 (and, presumably, later OSes) though.
This is the contents of the folder: http://i.imgur.com/p84jvYV.jpg
The desktop shortcut contains the following command:
quarry.ini simply contains:
And here's a few screenshots of what the it looks like in operation:
http://i.imgur.com/qha6Mka.jpg (Main screen).
http://i.imgur.com/InFkfvb.png
http://i.imgur.com/LI2oVls.png
I'm not really sure what the best approach here is; whether to attempt to convert this somehow into the latest Access format and attempt to make the modifications they require or whether to redo the entire thing by writing a software application from scratch to replicate it. Which raises a few questions ...
Any help/suggestions greatly appreciated
...I was asked by a customer to take a look at updating some "custom software" that someone "wrote" for them several years previous. "We think it was written in VB", they tell me. Simple, I think to myself; just re-write it from scratch or modify it (assuming the source code is available).
As it turns out, the 'software' is actually some old version of MS Access, which they've got running on an old (physical) XP system that everyone (across several sites) just RDPs into. Only one user can access it at a time and users wishing to log into it actually phone the other sites first, to check that nobody is using it!
Understandably, they'd like to move away from this modus operandi, and they also have a wish-list of features that they'd like to add, such as generating invoices (presently, someone prints out a summary then manually transfers the relevant data into Sage to generate an invoice).
What I've managed to determine so far is that everything that is required to run this is in a single folder (named 'Quarry'). It appears to use some sort of Access runtime executable (MSARN200.EXE, I think) and, in my tests, I've found that this will run on any XP machine, regardless of whether Access is installed or not. It doesn't seem to be compatible with Windows 7 (and, presumably, later OSes) though.
This is the contents of the folder: http://i.imgur.com/p84jvYV.jpg
The desktop shortcut contains the following command:
Code:
C:\Quarry\MSARN200.EXE C:\QUARRY\quarry.mdb /ini C:\Quarry\quarry.ini
Code:
[Microsoft Access]
Maximized=1And here's a few screenshots of what the it looks like in operation:
http://i.imgur.com/qha6Mka.jpg (Main screen).
http://i.imgur.com/InFkfvb.png
http://i.imgur.com/LI2oVls.png
I'm not really sure what the best approach here is; whether to attempt to convert this somehow into the latest Access format and attempt to make the modifications they require or whether to redo the entire thing by writing a software application from scratch to replicate it. Which raises a few questions ...
- How easy would it be to 'update' this to work with the latest Access?
- Is it possible that some of these files may be 'locked', making conversion impossible without the relevant password, and how would I be able to tell?
- Can Access support multiple concurrent users (ie a shared DB)?
- And more importantly .... are there any Access experts or programmers on here who fancy tackling this (as paid work of course)?
Any help/suggestions greatly appreciated
