Access Executable

[Equine Investor]

Hello everyone.

I'm in a real pickle!


I have converted an access database to .frm files and have the innosetup "compiler".

What I don't understand is how to make the whole thing run like Access.

I know it's a stupid question, but am I missing something?

I want my databases to run like a program for people that don't have Access on their computers.

Is there some kind of tutorial available or do I have to convert some sort of code.
(I have Office XP installed).

Sorry, I'm real new at this.

Any help appreciated.

 

[dk]

Hello everyone.

I'm in a real pickle!


I have converted an access database to .frm files and have the innosetup "compiler".

What I don't understand is how to make the whole thing run like Access.

I know it's a stupid question, but am I missing something?

I want my databases to run like a program for people that don't have Access on their computers.

Is there some kind of tutorial available or do I have to convert some sort of code.
(I have Office XP installed).

Sorry, I'm real new at this.

Any help appreciated.

Hi,

You can't run a database on a machine which doesn't have Access installed EXCEPT if you are using Office Developer Edition. This version will allow you to create a version of your database application which can run on machines regardless of whether Access is installed.

I'm a bit confused about the (converted to frm files) Isn't innosetup a utility for creating self extracting executables (like you can do with Winzip)?

Forgive me if I've missed something :D

 

[Equine Investor]

Sorry, I should have made things clearer in my last post.

I was told that normal dbf file weren't able to be read in a VB program that wasn't Developer Edition, so found a cool add-in (from Iriesostware) which converts .dbf files to frm files, which are able to be read by other programs.

Innosetup was just the way I was going to install the files as a package on users computers.

I know that you can't have the same utilites as access without having Developer Edition, what I need is a file viewer with the able to filter the data in various .dbf or .frm files.

Any ideas?

I found this in another post but am unclear on how or where to start.

Yes, it definately is possible, and not that hard. You can use Access to set up your tables, and ultimately, an .mdb file will house all your data. Even though the data is stored in the .mdb file, you don't need Access to read and write to the data.
You can use Visual Basic 6.0 to create an executable that refers to the tables in the .mdb file. The VB front-end is similar to Access, in that it allows you to create forms that will link to a record source set in the objects properties.
There's a few really neat things about VB 6.0 that you dcan't do in Access. You drop-combo, listboxes, etc. have lots more properties to play with. The rules of form construction are also more leniant. It is a breeze to have a VB form covered with listboxes and dropcombos all linked to different data sources. There's lots more, but I could go on and on about the pluses of building your db using an executable instead of an mdb. Of course, I forgot the most obvious, and thats that you can take the database anywhere, you just need the .mdb file to hold the tables, and an .exe to hold the forms and code.
One downside to creating dbs in VB is the lack of query help. In order to query in VB, you will need to have that query already built in the .mdb file. That doesn't seem like a big problem, but, that means no dynamic criteria. The SQL in any query that is in the .mdb file can not change. So if you have a query that sets a criteria from a textbox on a form, you can no put that in the .mdb file. It won't pick up the value from the textbox.
The only way to achieve a dynamic query in access in to either hard code it in as code with variables getting their value from the .exe's forms, or set the rowsource property of the object you wish to populate with the appropriate SQL.

HTH,