Question : Best way to package upgrades in Access

Hi.  I am a recently laid off IT professional  "In my spare time" I have created a small business app in Access.  What I am thinking of doing is to create a Website and sell it.  I have used the packaging solution wizard to package the app with runtime.

It's for a small one person business, so there won't be multiple users, but I was wondering if it would still be best to split the database into a frontend and backend.  There might be future upgrades.  If I use Inno for further upgrades and I did split the database, can Inno swap the front end and relink the tables to the frontend?  If I didn't split the database can Inno just swap in any frontend updates, and run any queries to make any table updates?

Is Inno not the best way to go to package upgrades?  Sorry, this is all new to me.  If it sounds like I don't know what I am talking about, I guess I don't.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Answer : Best way to package upgrades in Access

"but I was wondering if it would still be best to split the database into a frontend and backend.  "
Absolutely.  It's *always* best to do that. For one reason, down the road you will most likely need to be make additions/changes ... and they will have already entered data, so you don't want to have to stop work for some amount of time so you can have the mdb to make those changes.  Instead, you just replace the FE with the new version and relink to the BE.

If you are serious about selling a commercial runtime app from a web site, you are absolutely going to need the professional installation package below:

http://www.wise.com/Products.aspx             ' Wise, sadly is now owned by Symantec.

http://www.sagekey.com/    

The sage key scripts pretty much help you avoid all the issues you have identified.   I have two clients the I do some work for ... and both have commercial Access products that they see ... runtime of course.  Both have been using the above pair for several years ... with minimal issues.

Also, you will need this:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=D9AE78D9-9DC6-4B38-9FA6-2C745A175AED&displaylang=en  ' Access 2007 Runtime Download - free

see this also:


http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/bb229700.aspx  'Developer Extensions

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