PHP > MS Access

[matthewzammit]

hi.

I'm practically new to PHP...

I have a Ms Access database and I'm trying to have an online form which saves its results directly to the database so that i don't have to input them manually (just like i'm doing now)...

can you help me do this please? as I can't find any good tutorial to help me out.

thanks in advance,

Matthew

[Roger_Ramjet]

You use odbc_connect read the user notes, at the bottom of the page there is a working script for Access. You will need to familiarise yourself with ODBC generally. Personally, and I'm an Access programmer of great experience, I would not use Access for any web applications unless nothing else could possibly work, and I've never come across such a situation. Of course, if it's an intranet app where you have total control over the environment then Access is OK, otherwise expect problems at every point along the way.

[matthewzammit]

I'm definetely not dependant on Access. It's just that I'm building a "user subscription details" database and since Access can be integrated with Word for mail and email merge, i thought I'd use Access.

What better way is there instead of using MsAccess, which will still allow me to import the data to the main Access DB to allow to do the merging.

thnks again,

Matt

[Roger_Ramjet]

I'd just use MySQL for the web db, simple quick, easy AND RELIABLE. You can still use ODBC to connect to Access for dumping the data to your backend db.

Access is great for quick and dirty prototyping. It's just that it's not very robust when it's sitting on some host's web server. Indeed, Access is not very robust at the best of time, but with regular maint it is fine on a LAN with 8-10 concurrent users. You can even stretch the envelope up to 20-30 if you build in plenty of error traps and fault tollerance. Subject it to the kind of traffic that a website can generate and you'll loose data left right and centre, and it will fall over with maddening frequency.

It is really about choosing the right tool for the job.