How to access to a remote db

[Gerhard Häring]

* Sara D'Amico <saramard at camerond.tin.it> [2002-05-10 19:01 +0200]:
> Hi Steve,
> thanks for your quickness.
> 
> I'm trying to extend a network based on microsoft system with linux servers 
> in a school, for my thesis' project. 
> I used samba with linux to implement a ms NT Primary Domain Controller, and 
> a friend of mine is designing the db using MS Access.  I should get the 
> info about students from that db; and then create the accounts for the 
> authentication procedure in the network.
> I thought to use a table to store the usernames in the db. Then the PDC 
> accesses to the db and adds the user's accounts.
> So the problems are: the remote access and the PDC's update. 
 
Unless you are using the GUI side of Access, there's no good reason to
use it. I'd recommend to switch to the free MySQL db instead, which you
can easily access via ODBC, or natively from Python. There are also
tools available from the MySQL site for exporting an Access DB into
MySQL.

If you can't talk your friend into switching, you could check out using
mxODBC from the Linux side, a remote object protocol like PyRO, or
(maybe) SQL Relay.

Frankly, I have never used any of these myself, and I wouldn't want to,
either. And I wouldn't like to, either, if I could avoid it at all, by
using a database engine that's designed for remote access from
concurrent users.

Gerhard
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