Microsoft Office Reference Guide

Mar 26, 2004

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Recently, we covered how to put an Excel spreadsheet and chart online with interactivity. But what about Excel's big brother, Access? Isn't there a way to publish your Access database online?

With Access, what you actually publish is the table itself, and an HTML version of a page with the form that enables changes to the database, or a query that enables you to ask questions of the data. Remember that forms are the way you would normally enter and revise data anyway, so that's the logical front end to put into the HTML page.

Although the latest version of Access lets you get pretty advanced with DAPs (Data Access Pages), we start with the basics.

There are four ways to create a Data Access Page:

Autopage
Wizard
Add to an existing HMTL Page
Design from a Blank Page

Not surprisingly, the first two are the easiest, so let's begin with AutoPage.

If you remember our original Surrealty Project, we created a set of tables for an imaginary realtor. Essentially, we had one set of clients (to be filtered by prospects, sellers and buyers) and a set of listings. Either of these would be an excellent candidate for an AutoPage.

We'll base this one on our Listings, imagining that as a realtor we might want to post a set of listings and enable prospects to search through them, while letting other brokers to potentially add or make adjustments to them.

If we leave the Tables panel of Access and click on Pages, we see that three of the choices are immediately available. Click New, and we can also create an AutoPage: Columnar.

Figure 647

In the real world, you might want to password protect this aspect of the web page, but let's go with it for now.

With Listings selected as a Table or Query on which to base the page, we click OK.

Shazzam! We get a form for our table with the ability to sort by ascending or descending values. Put the cursor in the price field and click Ascending (A-Z), and see the first record with the lowest price. Alphabetical by last name, same thing.

Figure 648

Now, what are we actually doing? If we delete a record, we get a warning, because this form is part of the database. And sure enough, it will delete a record from the underlying table. So let's not and say we did, for now.

Instead, let's click File > Save As, and name the page Listings. Notice that it is saved as an HTM file. Very good.

Figure 649

Now, very important, note the actual folder location where the HTM file is saved. It is where the underlying MDB database file also resides, unless you are foolish enough to change it.

Figure 650

What you now have in the Access Pages panel is a shortcut to the newly saved page you created (which is essentially another form for adding or modifying data for the table on which it's based).

Figure 651

What do you need to publish, for this to work in a Web browser, over an intranet, or the Internet itself?

Let's look at the folder where the file(s) reside.

Switch to the Details view, and click Date Modified to bring the most recently changed files to the top. You'll see that three important files need to be posted to a server or pointed to by a browser:

The HTM file we just created.
The actual Database (or MDB) file.
A weird looking tiny (1 KB) *.LDB file with the same name as the database itself.

Figure 652

All three of these files need to be in the same folder in order for the Data Access Page to work properly. And the MDB file is the database with the tables that gets changed when the HTM page is modified.

Now that we get the idea, we can do a few other things. With the DAP open in Access we can click the View options, and either look at it in a browser (Preview), or access Design view to change its appearance or functionality.

Figure 653

If we create the page from the Wizard, we have other options, including layout, a theme for its appearance, and the ability to add our own title to the page.

Looking at a page that was created from scratch (Blank Page in Design View) and reopening it in Design View, we see that the latest version of Access gives us Drag and Drop capability with the elements in the Field List.

Figure 654

When you add more than one table to the page in this way, you may need to re-establish any relationships that exist in the underlying database to have them added to the online version. We also covered the relationships in this database in an earlier section.

Figure 655

This combination page enables filtering and sorting within either form. Again, to enable the functionality, the tiny LDB file must be present to negotiate the transactions between the HTM page and the tables in the MDB file.

So those are the basics of publishing an interactive version of your database online. We've only scratched the surface. For a more detailed account, I recommend Alison Balter's Mastering Microsoft Office Access 2003 (SAMS). (Lucky for you Safari users, this title is also available on the Safari Site (membership required). You'll find the Data Access Pages in Chapter 26.)

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