You have be careful when you order it too. We had a hardware Raid we bought from Dell, but they had overlaid a software Raid onto it, and it prevented the hardware Raid form workign correctly. Luckily, we have a large tape drive system, and a backup server. So, when the primary crapped out, we had to rebuild it, but we had all the data to do so.

We just bought a new Dell server, but I can't remember which one. I just know that I had to sign a check for about 6k!

Also, when you buy, don't look at utility now, and say saving 500 bucks is worth it, because we'll 'never need more'.

2 years from now, you will always need more. Design in expansion flexibility. SQL server is a little pricey, but probably worth it if your workstations access lots of data. It comes bundled as a part of Small Business Server.

SQL 2005 Express Edition is free. It supports 1 processor, 1GB of RAM, and DB has a max size of 4GB. Pretty good specs for free. This is MS's strategy for competing with MYSQL.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/sql/download/

Small Business Server is nice if you want Exchange, SQL, and Active Directory but it sounds like for Eric's requirements it's not necessary.

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Jon what are you running for the medical practice? (software wise)?

The server is a Domain controller, but like I said it's a small domain with only 4 users. As far as SQL, I don't know if I know enough about that do implement that, nor am I sure it would be worth the time or cost. I do everything here myself -- we don't have an IT person. I programmed our Access database myself. I'm very good with Visual Basic, but I certainly would not want to have to reprogram everything all over again.

Usually there are 3 users in the Access database, but even on our old computers (Pentium III server, Pentium II workstations), the Access database never has any issues or speed problems -- it always works very quickly. The main reason we need new computers is that these old machines just can't do what we need to do on the internet. We're a music company and we're expanding our website to include music downloads, and our current computers just cannot keep up with the multimedia demands of all this.

But since another company hosts our website, this has nothing to do with the server. So I just need a basic server that can handle hosting a small domain and some MS Office files including this Access database.

I just did a little bit of reading on SQL, and it sounds like it would be overkill. What advantages does SQL really have over Access?

It seems that for less than 10 users, Access does not really have problems. Also, our database is only around 35 MB in size. It's amazing how much data can be crammed into a 35 MB database. We have over 17,000 invoices, over 9,000 clients (companies), over 25,000 individual contacts, and over 97,000 transactions (a transaction is the notes/summary of a telephone conversation, any kind of correspondence, or meeting with a client). All that in a single 35 MB file.

At a very high level, when you upsize Access to SQL (it's a native feature of Access) Access will create the tables and data in SQL for you. Once that is finished, you create linked tables to the SQL database and rename the linked tables what your local tables are. This means you use the same Access database you have now and your forms, queries, reports VBA all think it's using the same data. No, recoding not even user training because to them, it's the same thing but on the back-end the data is in SQL.

A few advantages are:
1. Access does not handle multi-users access that well
2. SQL will defintely have better performance and backup capabilities.
3. No need to compact the DB anymore.

If your access file is corrupt now especially with all that data, you could be up the creek without a paddle. I'm sure you can restore from backup but what if somone spent all morning entering data?

Once you get to SQL, you can do some more uber cool things in the future like making it web based or at least some part of it web accessible like reports.

My $.02

More info ->http://www.aspfaq.com/show.asp?id=2182

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Good question. I also need to know for my wife's practice.

Thanks for the info. It looks like something to look into after we upgrade the computers.

I have noticed a couple of problems with multiple users on access:

1) If someone's computer locks up while they are in Access, upon rebooting and trying to get back in, it tells them the database is corrupt and that the system has to repair it. In order to repair, all other users must exit the database. This is not a big deal as we usually only have 2 or 3 users, but is indeed an inconvenience at times.

2) If 2 users are editing data in records that are chronologically near eachother in a table, one user will lock the records that the other user is trying to edit. So user #2 must wait until user #1 is finished. Again, this does not happen that often.

Those are the only 2 complaints that I have had.

http://www.compulink-software.com/
My understanding it that their focus is mostly on eyecare professionals and Ophthalmologists. To my dismay,they don't exactely have thin-clients as they claim and like I said it is 'Windows-based.'
They have you build your own tables at deployment, and highly customizable.

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