New Site Launches Tomorrow

Posted on July 6, 2011 by admin

You may have noticed that the blog has changed its look this past week. We have been hard at work developing new products and services centered around the needs of Access Users and Developers and will be launching a newly redesigned site tomorrow that showcases all of these new products and features.

One of the new features that we have gotten a lot of interest in is SQL hosting. SQL hosting will allow Access Developers to use linked tables. While this product will not be ready tomorrow, we will be collecting email addresses from interested parties. If you are interested, get a headstart by signing up here:



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Demystifying currentwebuser(x)

Posted on April 14, 2011 by Larry

As many of you know currentwebuser(x) can be used inside your Access Web Database as follows:

0 gives current user’s member ID.
1 gives current user’s display name.
2 gives current user’s login name
3 gives current user’s e-mail address.

The FAQ that we have been getting is “How do I define this information to SharePoint 2010?” or “How can I allow my users to self-maintain their current/preferred email address and use that as a variable inside my Access 2010 Web Application?”

Here is a short video which shows how to do this and how to change your time zone to eliminate the errors that occur when your native time zone is out of sync with the server.

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Tell us how you use Access Web Databases and get a FREE copy of the Access 2010 Programmers Reference

Posted on April 5, 2011 by Larry

We love hearing how our customers are solving real world business problems using Access Web Databases – so we decided a giveaway was in order. Simply drop us a note via a support ticket at accesshosting.zendesk.com that includes some details on the way you are using hosted Access Services and Access 2010 to solve your business problems . Upon reciept of your submission we will mail out a copy of the Access 2010 Programmers Reference ($45 US value) and feature your solution in a future blog post (your name and company name will not be disclosed). This offer is limited to the first 15 responders so act quickly.

The Access Hosting Team

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Check out Roger Jennings latest blog entries and scheduled webcasts

Posted on March 14, 2011 by admin

In case you missed it – Roger Jennings, author of Access 2010 In Depth, has been providing some great Access Hosting related content on his blog the past few days. Recent topics include Adding User Logons and Permissions, Viewing and Editing Reports, and Upsizing the Northwind Database to SharePoint 2010. He is also taking reservations for a series of 3 webcasts which are sure to be a great resource for anyone interested in Access Web Databases.

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Important Tip: Queries and the size of your Access 2010 Web database

Posted on March 5, 2011 by Larry

This blog post is a follow up to a very important post/question: How much SharePoint 2010 storage will my Access application consume ?

Unfortunately, there is still no way to figure out how much space your local Access 2010 database will take up on the web before it is published to SharePoint.  The good news is that after working with clients on this and their databases, I can tell you that queries are a big reason for the ballooning of the database file size.  The more queries that you have in a Database, the more your database will increase in size once it is published to Access Hosting and SharePoint 2010.

The best way to describe this problem is to give a real word example.  Recently a customer had a database that was about 40MB that they had built from scratch in Access 2010.  The Database and tables passed the web compatibility checker (BTW – Microsoft’s Checker doesn’t catch everything, but that’s a story for another post). The database had over 500 Queries.  This local  Access database  that was 40MB (under 10MB zipped) grew to be over 100MB after it was published to SharePoint.  It more than doubled in size and took over 10 minutes to upload!

Please take into account that Queries seem to massively increase the storage space needed on SharePoint.  The additional load times is also something to be weary of.  If you are making a database from scratch, the best thing to do is create a few forms, tables, and queries and then publish the site to Access Hosting.  The first publish takes the longest.  After you have the basics published and your database started, you can continue to develop your database.   As you work in Access to add new queries, tables and reports, all of these changes will be uploaded and synced to the server seamlessly.

TIP: Don’t build a huge complex database locally and then attempt one large (and long) publish

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Screencast Organizer Template now on office.com

Posted on March 5, 2011 by Larry

Great news – the screencast tutorial web database that we developed to help organize our Access 2010, SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 tutorials has been accepted as a direct download from Microsoft. Access 2010 users can now go to the File/New menu and select “Samples” – You should see our template right along side of the Northwind Native and Northwind Web databases. Enjoy !

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Get an Access Database on the web in less than 5 minutes

Posted on February 15, 2011 by Larry

How it Works
When you publish a web database, Access Services creates a SharePoint site that contains the database. Every database you publish will have it’s own unique URL (i.e. demo.accesshosting.com/database1/). All of the database tables, forms, reports and queries move into SharePoint as part of the publishing process.

After you publish, SharePoint visitors can use your database, based on their permissions for the SharePoint site. They can visit the web database’s URL or you can distribute an .accdw file that they can open in Access 2010 or the free Access Runtime.

Get a Web Database online in 5 Minutes!
After receiving your credentials from Access Hosting, you can get a valid web database online in minutes. Simply download our Contacts Web Database template and follow our simple step-by-step instructions:

Step 1: Download Access Hosting’s Contacts Web Database
Step 2: Open the Database in Access 2010
Step 3: Publish the Database to the Web (watch video)
Step 4: Refer to the ‘Getting Started’ Tab for help

This database is a simple shared address book in the cloud. You can add/edit contacts, search the database, add comments and print reports.

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Charting inside Access Web Databases using SharePoint 2010

Posted on February 5, 2011 by Larry

This tutorial walks through the process of creating an Access Web Database, connecting tables in that database to a SharePoint Chart Web Part, and then incorporating that chart back inside an Access 2010 Web Form:

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Access Hosting – New Features for 2011

Posted on January 1, 2011 by Larry

Access Hosting 2011 – New Year, New Features:

As part of our ongoing effort to provide the most feature complete implementation of Access Services on SharePoint 2010 we are introducing a series of enhancements to our hosting service for 2011.
Our multi-tenant hosting plans now feature:

- Support for English, Spanish, German, and French language packs on our shared hosting plans (all others available on our new Access Services 2010 Virtual Appliance)
- Support for the OData service entry point into all Access Web Databases
- A new and improved control panel for self-service administration of user account passwords
- Support for permissive handling of all file types including PDF
- Support for SharePoint Designer outside of Access Web Databases

Our newly introduced Access Services 2010 Virtual Appliance provides a turnkey cloud based solution for customers requiring dedicated server performance and features including:

- SSL support with or without vanity domain name (www.yourcompany.com)
- Office Web Application support (Microsoft Office Professional Volume License Agreement Required)
- Customized security configurations such as lockdown by individual IP address, forced SSL/HTTPS connectivity and VPN connectivity into Access Web Databases

We will be producing a series of blog posts and videos over the next few weeks that explore each one of these features in more detail on http://blog.accesshosting.com

Happy 2011
The Access Hosting Team

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Preventing Web Users from Opening your Database in Access 2010

Posted on November 30, 2010 by admin

This video shows you how to create a new set of SharePoint permissions that will prevent users from opening your web database in Access 2010. The users are able to modify data in web based forms and render web based reports but cannot open the web database in native Access 2010. This is a very important security feature since any user who can open the database in Access 2010 can also make a local copy of the entire web application – in many cases that is not desired behavior.

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