Serving up MS Access MDB files

[cajun]

I'm preparing a quote for a client who has a Coldfusion site but is using MS
Access as the database. I'd like to add to the quote the option of upgrading to
MS SQL or MySQL.

Can anyone tell me how many simultaneous users can access an MDB database
through a Windows IIS server/Coldfusion website? I read somewhere that Access
supported 25 simultaneous connections, but surely that applies only to using
the Access clients and not IIS server. My own experience with it seems to be
far, far fewer than 25.

And the bonus question, Does that same limitation exist on a Linux Coldfusion
server? I'm thinking that the ceiling on MDB connections is artificially
imposed by MS.

Grazie! :beer;

[Dan Bracuk]

As a bonus answer, if you switch from Access to something else, change the name
of the dsn in your cf administrator. I once changed a database from Access to
Oracle and came up with one of those dreaded intermittent problems. I'd be
testing the new pages and every so often I would get "Page could not be
displayed". If I refreshed it, it would run, but the form structure would be
gone. The final solution was to re-name the Oracle dsn.

[dphillipsCFX]

Microsoft used to have documentation on this years ago but now I can't find it
anywhere. In my experience access will start to bomb if it gets over 25MB and
you have more than 25 users connected.

I'd try to get your client to go with MySQL. Sure, it may be cheaper for them
to stick with Access right now but how much will it cost them if the site is
slow or down due to issues caused by Access?

Dan Phillips
CFXHosting.com