Running a Windows application from a shared folder

Question

I need to develop a simple windows application using Visual Studio 2010 and use a MS Access relational database that will be accessed on a public shared folder in our network.

We have no option to create and host web applications on our server.

After we develop the application and create our exe files, Can more than one user run the same exe file from the shared folder and generate reports at the same time?

Answer 1

Multiple users can execute the file at the same time (normally execution is read-only). The only problems would be when you wanted to modify any file in the shared folder (eg writing a log file or when publishing a new version)

Any number of processes (on the same or different machines) can access a file in a read-only manner. However, once they have a handle on the file, it can't be modified. This means that when publishing a new version, all running copies would have to be stopped. If multiple instances wanted to write to the same log file, you'd have to implement some form of queueing mechanism / handle the log file being written by another process and not being able to get a write handle.

It's worth noting that access is not stable when used with too many users. If I remember 12 is the maximum number of concurrent users I'd heard recommended although it seems to vary based on usage.