Defining a Microsoft access Datasource

The more I think about implementation of a GCM the more I think about trying to make the components as independent as possible. I like databases for storing information because they give an orderly framework that is easy to access but they can be slow.

A database is simply a binary file. If we know how information is stored in the file we can optimize ways of retrieving it that could be much faster then a standard database. However, it is nice to have tools that are easy to use for sorting though and organizing information like Microsoft access.

Remember that tables in microsoft access do not need to be stored in the microsoft access database. For instance, you can create linked tables. These linked tables can come for instance from other databases or spreadsheets. All that is really necessary is for Microsoft access to know how to read this information as a table.

This is where I believe data access objects come in. I’ll have to look at them further but I’m hoping that they can be used as a way to use an arbitrary source of information as a table. The following linking gives information on how to create Data Access objects in Microsoft Access.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms243192.aspx

I’ll write more once I read about this.