I’ve got a client who has a very large internal system using Access, which is used internally to handle virtually all company data. They want a web front-end to the customer data in that database, and would be running on a different server. Given the limitations on Access, the front-end would likely use MySQL.
Which leaves the issue of synchronizing the data. It doesn’t need to be to-the-second, even daily would be fine, but I’m really unsure of a good means of doing this.
Given the scope of the existing system, it would be a disproportionate amount of time and work to move the entire system to another database such as MySQL.
Is there any practical way to accomplish this?
I would get an experienced Access developer to upsize the Access application to use SQL Server Express for the data instead of MySQL. I would choose SQL Server Express over MySQL is it is very likely to work better with Access and you’ll likely find a lost more online support for the combination of MS Access and SQL Server than you would for MS Access and MySQL.
This work can take several weeks or more for an experienced person. And of course the larger the system the longer this will take.
One factor is if the client wants data to come down from the website to the database or just publish data to the web? If just publishing to the web then the suggestion of updating the web database using queries could work. If both ways then things start to get trickier and upsizing to SQL Server for the future would be a better option.