S.o.s.

[wishstar99]

Hello all,

I need help. I am using MS Access database trying to do a small stored procedure, but i'm stuck. Hope you guys can help me out. First of all, is MS Access DB good for an e-commerce business? For example doing data access via the internet? I know it's not as good as SQL 2000 or MySQL. But how slow is MS Access? If you guys know, please let me know. I am planning to change to SQL 2000, but if MS Access DB is cool enough then I would like to keep it.

Here's my real question:
I have a table call tblRates. It has for example two columns and 3 rows.
column 1: LBS
under column 1 are (10, 15, 20)

column 2: zone2
under column 2 are ($5, $10, $15)

if I do a:
SELECT zone2
FROM tblRates
WHERE lbs = 10;

i will get: $5

but if I do this:
SELECT @zone
FROM tblRates
WHERE lbs = 10;

when I run this, it will ask me the value for the variable @zone, so i type in zone2
but the result doesn't give me $5 but instead the word zone2 .......

i know there must be something else, but i don't know what. thanks in advance.

[xordevoreaux]

I've used MS Access on a Web server before using MacroMedia MX Studio 2004.
In short, MS Access is not scalable or resilient enough to withstand even marginal levels of sustained Internet traffic.

Switch to SQL Server as you're planning to do.

Consider approaching an organization like PayPal to handle your daily e-commerce needs until you're ready to handle all the back-end yourself. You have variable rate pricing in your pricing schemes. Research with PayPal or such an organization the versatility available to you.

Also, in addition to being relatively robust in terms of transactional processing (they more than likely have much more collective server processing power) PayPal also has the merchant license, credit fraud protection, merchant protection, and buyer protection systems in place. Why expose yourself to that level of liability when you can have another organization front that exposure for you?

Alternately, you may also want to ask your bank from whom you would be using for your credit card processing if the bank offers any back-end services for you. Both such a bank and Paypal would provide the record transaction history that you could, in turn, put in your own private back-end database that's not accessible from the Internet. If PayPal handled all of the credit card transations using the pricing scheme of your choice, then all you need is the bank account (business licences help too).

[Rawhide]

I agree that Access is not good for E-commerce apps.

@zone represents a text string, not field name.