Database for courier business - access?

[ideaspclst]

I would like to start a courier business. I am planning on only serving a select business type so I will have limited customers. I need to know if Access would be a good app to use to track courier activity as well as printing out forms based on the info entered in the database. I would need it to be accessible by a telecommuting employee to input data into my database. Any info or informative sites would be greatly appreciated!

[Colinc]

For remote use and scaleability Access is not good. You are better using a web based system like php and mysql. You will also need a fixed ip address on your connection for the remote access to work.

[Gruumsh]

Any decent web hosting company will give you PHP and MySQL as databases... then, all you need is a good content-management system as the basis for your website, so you're not re-inventing the wheel. Have a look at Drupal, here...

[Harold L]

Access is really easy to set up and use, so it'll probably work very well for you. Filemaker is also a good option.

If you want several people accessing the database at the same time, consider MS SQL Server Express Edition (free) with several people using Access (with linked tables) to work with the database. SQL Server is better suited to handling multiple users at the same time.

www.microsoft.com (http://www.microsoft.com/sql/editions/express/default.mspx)