Question

My MS access database is located here :

http://192.168.202.1/dbname.mdb

Other computer in LAN network have VB.net s/w installed.

How do I connect to this db?
Thanks in advance 🙂

Answer 1

Actually, your terminology you using is wrong. You don’t connect to a word file. You don’t connect to a power point file.

So you have to keep in mind here you are not really connecting to some text file or mdb file that just happens to be sitting on a hard drive.

You are thus simply opening a file.

I mean it is silly to say we connect to a word file, or we connect to a Power point file. So in the case of the office suite and those basic simple files that resides on the disk drive?

We are talking about plane Jane windows file.

A horse is a horse is a horse.

A file is a file is a file.

So you don’t connect to the jpg file sitting on the hard drive, you OPEN the jpg file. So if you talking about your current setup it best to use the correct terminology here. You are not connecting to that Access mdb file, but are in fact opening a plane Jane windows file. If you look close at your connection string, it will ALWAYS have a fully qualified windows path name in it that resolves to a file sitting on a folder.

So if you place that file on some server, say web server, then then you still faced with having to open that windows file. This is NOT ANY different then wanting to open a power point file. That means if you going to connect over the internet then you need to EXTEND the windows file system (this means you will need some kind of VPN). At the end of the day, if you cannot use windows networking to brwose and open the folder where that file resides, then you cannot open that file with Access (or more specific in your case the JET data engine).

So for example, if the server where the file resides is a non windows box, say Linux, then you need to “add or use” or “install” the windows file and networking system on that box. A common choice in Linux is to install and run Samba on that computer.

Keep in mind that in the case of using SQL server, then you are connecting to a SERVICE running ON THAT server. In this case then you not opening a file on the remote box, but are simply using a socket (tp/ip) connection to some service. So you not just opening a silly old windows file that happens to be a mdb file on that system in this case.

So as such when you use FTP or http, these are not real “windows” networking systems that allow you to open + use a plane Jane windows file.

So as such, just keep in mind the concept here that you are NOT connecting to some file, but you are just going to OPEN the file.
You need to be able to OPEN the file, and you need to be using the windows networking system to do this open file in the case of Access. I mean, you don’t have to install Access(JET) on the target computer. You don’t have to install Power Point on the target computer to open a power point file. So you are ONLY opening a file that just happens to be on some other computer.

As such, your path name of http: is not allowed since that is now using http, and not windows file/networking system. As such a path name has nothing to do with windows networking and opening of a simple file sitting on the hard disk. So HTTP or FTP etc. are not based on windows networking and file system.

I don’t think this basic concept is too hard to grasp, but at the end of the day the concept you need to grasp and learn is that when you open a windows file sitting in a folder on the hard drive, then then will you need the windows file system to open such files. The idea and concept of opening a file in a folder might be new to you, but it is a basic requirement and understanding you need to solve this issue.

As noted, you can consider a VPN, but I explain why such a setup is not going to work in this article:

Using a wan with ms-access? How fast, how far?
http://www.kallal.ca/Wan/Wans.html

I suppose another possibility would be to consider the new web publishing ability that Access has. In the following video note how I switch to running the Access application 100% in the browser. The resulting application does not need any ActiveX or Silverlight. So the web pages run + work fine on my smartphone and even my iPad.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AU4mH0jPntI

So you can use the new web publishing feature, and that would allow one to use http: to use the application.