Concurrently access database with Excel as frontend - doable?

Question

Suppose you have an database with the largest tables containing about 200.000 rows, and frequently modified. The client wants Excel to connect via ODBC to the database, and work as a frontend to manage the data. The data should be modifiable by up to 25 users concurrently.

My first instinct would be to recommend something else, for example a web frontend. But suppose the client insists on the Excel solution, would you regard it as doable, and what pitfalls would you see in it?

My doubts would be about:

1. data integrity (how to manage users modifying same data at the same time)
2. large amounts of data moved unnecessarily (when opening the Excel workbook I imagine that the whole database has to be transferred)
3. security (showing only parts of data to appropriate users in a secure way would be challenging - see previous point)
4. using a tool (Excel) for something, in which it doesn't excel (pardon the pun)

Answer 1

I do this all the time. No you don't have to bring in the whole database or even the whole table. I use ADO and VBA and send SQL statements via the Command object. For example, I have a royalty database with an Excel front end.

The user types in an invoice number and a SELECT statement retrieves that one record and populates some custom classes. The user enters/modifies some data and clicks 'Save'. Then the class has a method that writes the record back to the database with and UPDATE or INSERT depending on the situation.

At the end of the month, the user enters a date range and retrieves some records into a report, again just a SELECT statement filling some classes and outputting to a sheet.

Use Transactions so you can roll back if you hit any record locking problems, but with 25 users you probably won't.