I have a question about a feature and I don't know if it's applied in Microsoft Access or not. After I finish my database tables, forms and reports, I want the user just to open forms and these forms will do most the tasks which are adding, deleting or modifying the records. I don't want the end user to see the other object such as tables, or to view or change the layout of the forms.
Is there any way to save the database just as exe file or limiting the permissions of the end users?
Since no version is supplied, I'll give you what I know about MS Access 2007.
Take a quick look at this page
What you need is to convert your accdb file to accde. This will hide the navigation pane and forbid any action from being taken on your forms.
An .accde file is a "locked-down" version of the original .accdb file.
If the .accdb file contains any Visual Basic for Applications (VBA)
code, only the compiled code is included in the .accde file. As a
result, the VBA code cannot be viewed or modified by the user. Also,
users working with .accde files cannot make design changes to forms or
reports.
The same was also true for earlier versions, i.e. mdb to mde for Access 2003. I am sure that there is something for newer versions of MS Access as well.
Hope I helped.
Related
I'm trying to make a custom column (for a custom list), where the users can upload files without overwriting the previous - this way they can keep past versions of the files and upload newer ones and the new ones append. There already exist "append only" comment columns and file upload columns that I can see.
I'm working with Sharepoint designer 2007 (2010 doesn't work with the site), and I'm referencing this code I found online somewhere (http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=0qN89meu), trying to research the Sharepoint documentation on MSDN. I can open the site in designer, but don't know where to go from there (it's already running on a web server, not opening it locally).
I'm just not clear on how to start, I thought there'd be a simple "right+click -> new column" feature but I can't find it. If someone could point me in the right direction to where I could start creating columns on the site, that would be great. Thanks!
An untested idea :
Create a document library with a lookup column to the custom list.
Create an event receiver (ItemAdded and ItemUpdated) than will take the attached files and move them to the other list (with the correct lookup value). --> Code with Visual Studio
Grant to this document library only read permissions.
Adapt the view to display the related documents in the dispform of the custom list.
Advantages:
this seems to answer to your need
you gain all the usability of a document library (nothing prevent you to grant edit rights to other users, force check out, etc.)
Disadvantages:
you have to play with lookup. Can be tricky sometimes, if you play with features
you split one business entity to two entities. You will have to deal with cascading delete (if you need it).
I am enhancing and fixing the forms/queries/VBcode etc. for an access 2007 database. The current version is being actively used and when I am done with my changes I need to transfer in my changes without disrupting the data stored in the tables already in the running mdb.
I'm not entirely sure how to handle the "merge" when the time comes. As an experiment I have a local backup copy of the version I started working on and used the import external Access data option. This imported the new forms, queries, vb, etc. But the only hang up is that the switchboard form isn't the new. Switchboard forms of course are guided by the switchboard manager but I was hoping that all that logic is held inside the form itself somehow. It seems this is not the case. After the import there is a new form of the same name with a number after it as expected, and the correct create/modify date. But when open it looks exactly the same as the old switchboard.
Any ideas?
It sounds to me as if you have both the data and the forms etc in the one database. This is not a good idea at all and if you are updating, it is the ideal time to correct the problem. If you split the database, any updates to forms and code can be simply copied to the user without worrying about the data. You will find some notes here: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/access-help/split-an-access-database-HA010342026.aspx
The Access switchboard manager uses a table named Switchboard Items to dynamically populate switchboard form pages. You will need to transfer the updated version of that table to make your revised switchboard pages available in the other project.
I have an Access 2007 database with an attachments facility. Currently the client may upload files locally but the files cannot be accessed elsewhere. I have been able to carry out a similar operation when developing on a web based system however I cannot seem to do it on an Access 2007 database and I am unsure as to whether it is even possible. Basically the system needs to connect to the SQL server online and upload the file although the database is not online itself. I would be grateful for any pointers!
I have faced this situation. Here are your choices:
Use Access attachment field in a shared ACCDB -- won't work "online" very well, but you could park the ACCDB on your LAN and make it a separate back-end ACCDB shared by all. Your post didn't say whether your users are either local or "online" -- and whether "online" meant web.
Use VarChar(Max) (aka BLOB) fields in SQL-Server to store the attachments. But, you can't populate these easily from Access. Assuming you control the server where SQL-Server is running, you can use ADO in Access to upload a VarChar(Max) using the bulkinsert T-SQL command. This works pretty well and it's easy.
Create an upload web page. Use iExplorer automation (i.e, create an iExplorer object) in VBA to navigate to that page, fill it in and press the upload button. For security reasons, you cannot use automation to fill in a file upload control, but you can use sendkeys. This doesn't work perfectly -- sometimes you have to repeat the process once or twice, but it works pretty well if it's invoked by a user who can validate it's working. This is what I did -- easiest solution.
Best solution probably is to create a web service using WCF to handle the upload. There are plenty of posts on how to encode and decode byte arrays to store files as VarChar(Max). It works extremely well. Unfortunately, Access cannot directly consume web services as far as I've been able to tell, so you would have to write a small vb.net program to do this and call it from Access.
You could store the files/attachments outside of SQL/Server - just on the server, and store only the links/URL's for those files in Access. You could make each one launchable. This is easy but harder to control the security.
You can use Sharepoint to store/share the attachments. That can work pretty well depending on the size of the attachments and your connectivity. It's built to support this.
Access allows multiple attachments in one record. SQL/Server doesn't support this. So, if you can split your ACCDB into a front-end for the programs only and back-end ACCDB that is sharable by your users to contain the data/attachments, that is by far the easiest answer.
Our application is written in C# using .net 2.0. The application tracks our business process and users can attach office documents for reference as attachments. They frequently edit those documents. Currently, they have to save the file to their hard drive, edit and save the file, then re-attach to our application to save into database (SQL 2005).
Our users would like to be able to edit the document and save the changes without needing to detatch, edit, and re-attach.
We can programmatically launch the office (word, excel or powerpoint) document, but how can we tell when the document has closed and re-attach the updated version to the database automatically?
Thanks for any help.
Joe
You may have a designated directory (e.g. Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.MyDocuments)) where you keep the files currently edited and put a FileSystemWatcher to watch whether the file changes.
The Diagnostics.Process class also has an "Exited" event that will notify you when the process, well, exited.
Look into SmartDocument technology at MSDN. Of the three productivity apps you mention (Word, Excel, Powerpoint) the first two for sure, and possibly Powerpoint, can have the right side panel -- where you usually see styles, navigation, or tasks -- programmed through VS using SmartDocument and Tools for Office plugins.
So, you can program the panel such that the user, working in Office or Excel (and possibly PP -- haven't looked into that) can select the document to be edited from your application, do the edits, and save/attach the document, all from the Word interface. The programming behind the right side panel will automagically take care of detaching, and reattaching the document, and can also save the document to SQLServer, if you like.
Hope this helps.
If you are launching the file by using Process.Start method and passing file path as a parameter, you can use the WaitForExit() method to be notified when the user has closed the file.
I want to make a WPF application that exists in one directory including all files that it needs: .exe, .mdf database, .xml config files, etc.
the application should work no matter what directory it is in so that it supports this scenario:
person 1 executes the application in c:\temp\wpftool.exe
the application reads and writes to the c:\temp\wpftool.mdf database
person 1 zips up that directory and sends it to person 2 via e-mail
person 2 unzips it to c:\Users\jim\documents\checkout\wpftool.exe, the application reads and writes to the same database in that directory (c:\Users\jim\documents\checkout\wpftool.mdf)
person 2 zips the directory up again and sends it back to person 1 to continue making changes on it
What is the best way to create a WPF application that supports the above scenario?, considering:
there should be no hard-coded database connection strings
what is the best deployment method, click once? or just copy the .exe file out of the /release directory?
reasonable security so that users have to log in based on passwords in the database, and if a third person happens to intercept the e-mail, he could not easily look at the data in the database
Some points on the database side:
Assuming the "New user" already has SQL installed, they'd need to attach the (newly copied) database. Besides having sufficient access rights to attach a database, your application would need to configure the call to include the drive\folder containing the database files. If your .exe can identify it's "new home folder" on the fly, you should be able to work that out.
Define "reasonable security". Any database file I get, I can open, review, and ultimately figure out (depends on how obscure the contents are). Can you obfuscate your data, such as using table "A" instead of "Customer"? Would you really want to? The best possible security involves data encryption, and managing that--and in particular, the encryption keys--can be a pretty advanced subject, depending on just how "secure" you want your data to be.
For the database, I would look into using the "user instance" feature in SQL Express. Combined with the |DataDirectory| substitution string support it makes it very easy for your application to get hooked up.
In all honesty I have not deployed a ClickOnce app leveraging this approach myself yet, but I just thought I would bring it to your attention because it's what I would look into myself if I was building something like you described.