Customer database online

I’m relatively new to MODx and have a client that runs a service business and keeps an inventory of his customer’s plant in a MS Access database.

Part of the brief is to make this data available to his customers online. Data access needs to be password protected so that each client can only see their own data.

Does anyone know of any ready made snippets or modules that could help with this task?

Thanks,

Mike

The biggest issue here is the MS ACCESS database, MODX runs on MySQL, and MS ACCESS databases really arn’t designed to run on the web, is there any chance that this could be switched to MySQL.

Then us the login snippet that comes installed with the default/sample site in MODx to control access. And write a custom snippet/page (not sure if there is one all ready) to view the results based on login details.

Thanks for the reply. I appreciate MS Access is a problem and I don’t think the customer is going to want to change that. One possible solution I had considered was to create a per customer extract from the Access database and upload that to an online MySQL table in MODx. The tables could then be accessed by customers online.
It does have the disadvantage that the on-line database will be out-of-sync with the live database but from what I can gather it doesn’t change that frequently so is probably a viable option.

Is there any prewritten code youknow of that could help with that approach?


Mike

perhaps this can help:
http://www.bullzip.com/products/a2m/info.php

Ok thanks the Access database converter looks useful. I’ll see if anyone else has any bright ideas on how to do this.

Mike

An Access database can be run on an Windows IIS web server.
I had the bad luck to work on an ASP e-Commerce site with one

Thanks David,

I’m steering well clear of MS on this one!

I think the preferred option, from what I’ve seen so far, is to build a command line script for the Access to MySQL converter that will upload a customer specific extract of the Access database to the MySQL online database. I can then control user access in MODx and use MODx for the database search and display of data.

If I get this right, the client will just need to hit an Upload button after he makes any changes to the live Access database. I think this may be a plus because the client may not want to share all the Access database with the customer - I can configure the converter to only upload the required fields/records.

Sounds easy but I’m sure there will be a few snags along the way!

If anyone has any further ideas I’m still listening!

Thanks all,

Mike