If I put my inventory software on my server, How can I access the database??

Hello:

Have a quick question. I currently have a inventory software that I have on my computer. It uses sql server as the database. I have it installed on one other computer in the office, and that computer has a shared drive to my computer to access the database. This works fine for the office, but we have a few retail locations that would like to access the database a few times a day. Since I'm not a computer expert, but would imagine that I could put this application on a server with a dedicated ip address. I could use some sort of VPN software to make a connection to the directory that houses the database info. and have my retail location use this way to access information. Would this work? Also it seems like we can't have but one person hit the database at a time. I guess that we would need to pay for more people to access the database.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

That really depends on the features of the inventory software that you have. Some inventory software would have multi-user access, some would just be stand-alone.

But if the software can support multiple users, then yes, you can have multiple users across multiple sites accessing the same software. This is something that you'd have to bring up with your inventory software vendor.

VPN access would be ideal to keep your network secure, and you can use the built-in VPN server feature of Windows Server and the VPN client feature of Windows 2000/XP/Vista.

You're on the right track.