MS Access, software app or a System?

"David W. Fenton" wrote:

=?Utf-8?B?Sm9keSBKZW5raW5z?=
wrote in :

In the works of the security officer that thinks that Access is a
software app, a System has funding, O&M, hardware/software and
specialized personnel hired to maintain it, etc,etc.

I'm reading behind the lines that there's a failure to distinguish
between:

1. Access the application, installed on a PC.

2. an Access application, which is an MDB/ACCDB that is a program
itself that incidentally requires Access to be installed to run it.

In the former case, Access is an application, not a system.

In the latter, it's a system.

I would guess that the parties with vested interests are not going
to want to distinguish between Access and the advertising
department's Assets Management application, that just so happens to
use Access. But if they had any sense, they would make just that
distinction.

--
David W. Fenton http://www.dfenton.com/
usenet at dfenton dot com http://www.dfenton.com/DFA/
.

So, just out of pure curiosity, how would you classify my Fleet Maintenance
program that is a small db since we only have 38 trucks and 46 trailers. It
has 4 years of maintenance records, about 6000 records, to include all
pertinent data on the equipment and the vendors. It assigns and prints
Purchase Orders and has about 6 forms and 12 reports. I have split it and
put the be on the server. I'm the sole developer and maintainer and it's
really only used by myself and one other. It's not "on anyones books" since
the cost was minimal; MS Office 2007 Pro, several $50 books and my time at
home and work. (I don't think we can count the alcohol consumed out of
frustration...LOL)

On the other hand, the records produced from this "app/system" proved a tire
ring theft and per the DA saved our company $16,000.

So....do I have an app or a system??

Cindy

=?Utf-8?B?Q2luZHk=?= wrote in
:

"David W. Fenton" wrote:

=?Utf-8?B?Sm9keSBKZW5raW5z?=
wrote in
:

In the works of the security officer that thinks that Access is
a software app, a System has funding, O&M, hardware/software
and specialized personnel hired to maintain it, etc,etc.

I'm reading behind the lines that there's a failure to
distinguish between:

1. Access the application, installed on a PC.

2. an Access application, which is an MDB/ACCDB that is a program
itself that incidentally requires Access to be installed to run
it.

In the former case, Access is an application, not a system.

In the latter, it's a system.

I would guess that the parties with vested interests are not
going to want to distinguish between Access and the advertising
department's Assets Management application, that just so happens
to use Access. But if they had any sense, they would make just
that distinction.

So, just out of pure curiosity, how would you classify my Fleet
Maintenance program that is a small db since we only have 38
trucks and 46 trailers. It has 4 years of maintenance records,
about 6000 records, to include all pertinent data on the equipment
and the vendors. It assigns and prints Purchase Orders and has
about 6 forms and 12 reports. I have split it and put the be on
the server. I'm the sole developer and maintainer and it's really
only used by myself and one other. It's not "on anyones books"
since the cost was minimal; MS Office 2007 Pro, several $50 books
and my time at home and work. (I don't think we can count the
alcohol consumed out of frustration...LOL)

I'd call it a system.

On the other hand, the records produced from this "app/system"
proved a tire ring theft and per the DA saved our company $16,000.


So....do I have an app or a system??

The key distinction to me seems to me whether they recognize that
the application in this case is your fleet management app, not
Access. And then the determination of whether it's a system or app
should be made based on the characteristics of your fleet management
app, rather than on the characteristics of Access.

Classifying your app based on evaluating Access would be like
classifying a VB app based on evaluating the runtime files needed
for it (in old VB -- obviously from VB6 on, you could compile to EXE
without need of the runtime files).

--
David W. Fenton http://www.dfenton.com/
usenet at dfenton dot com http://www.dfenton.com/DFA/

Security? CNA? What's the acronym, and what's the context?

If you mean, is Access a system that needs to be secured, yes, it's a
system. People use the system to handle data and to automate tasks, and the
system needs to have security audits and training.

If you mean, is Access a system that needs to be administred, no, it's an
app, part of MS office. Systems built using Access may need separate admin
support, but MSACCESS.EXE should be supported as a small part of your
standard desktop.

(david)

"Jody Jenkins" wrote in message
...
There is a debate among our security people. Some say that MS Access is a
software app, others considered a system and needs to be CNA`d. I say its
a
software app. Any thoughts.

All of the databases that I have created so far (21 of them) are used solely
by a small group of individuals, between 2-10 users per database. Our IT dept
is responsible for MS Office O&M and I am only the DBA. All of the databases
are secured. With that being said, I believe that MS Access is a application,
not a system.

"Jody Jenkins" wrote:

There is a debate among our security people. Some say that MS Access is a
software app, others considered a system and needs to be CNA`d. I say its a
software app. Any thoughts.

Jody Jenkins wrote:

There is a debate among our security people. Some say that MS Access is a
software app, others considered a system and needs to be CNA`d. I say its a
software app. Any thoughts.

Somewhere in the middle.

Anyone could write a malicious MDB/ACCDB/MDE/ACCDE/etc file which
deletes all files on the hard drive or network server. Or worse it
encrypts those files with a hidden password. Then the owner of the
app can demand a ransom.

Or worse it could randomly make changes to every 10,000th byte in a
random number of the files on the server.

Mind you an Excel spreadsheet, Word document or DOS exe could do the
same thing.

Tony
--
Tony Toews, Microsoft Access MVP
Tony's Main MS Access pages - http://www.granite.ab.ca/accsmstr.htm
Tony's Microsoft Access Blog - http://msmvps.com/blogs/access/
For a convenient utility to keep your users FEs and other files
updated see http://www.autofeupdater.com/
Granite Fleet Manager http://www.granitefleet.com/