On 2017-10-24 07:59, Rafael Copquin wrote:
Hi Michael
Yes you can! I don't know which of your presidents said that, but it applies here I guess.
As I said in that post, I am an old programmer with very little patience to read an enormous amount of information. But my son, currently working for a US company as a software engineer enlightened me and helped me set it up.
I opened an account in AWS, and for a year I shall be able to use their services for free. In AWS you have something they call RDS, which is basically what I was looking for: a SQL Server as a service, meaning all I need is to instance a SQL Server and work from anywhere accessing all of the databases. And I will just pay for what I use and for the time I use it. it has to do with hours per month, or number of clicks or whatever, but it will amount to no more that 50 bucks, for what I gather.
They have MySQL also as a service I believe, but since I only deal with SQL Server, I would not know how good that is.
But the important thing here is you do not need to get a VM with a SQL engine inside, which is the case with Google Cloud Computing. You can get one though, through a different service they call EC2 and EC3, but that is too much for my limited purposes. (I have small clients, with few stores to operate, so I do not need too much complexity)
In my case, I simply create a ODBC connection string and use it in my VFP app, accessing the AWS SQL Server with as much ease as I can access the LAN server.
BTW, because in my country sometimes we have problems with the internet service, I implemented a special routine that will access a local server as well. In case there is a connection failure, the stores work locally and then, when the service is restored, the routine updates the cloud server with all the transactions missed. No big deal there.
I know I could set up a replication paradigm, but then it costs more money and my stingy clients do not like to pay too much.
I hope it helps
Regards
Rafael Copquin
Thanks, Rafael! This sounds exactly like what I was talking about. Currently, my ISP hosts my MySQL (MariaDB) databases and I just use a simple SQLSTRINGCONNECT handle to work with it, as though it were on the local LAN. Costwise I think he's great for what I'm doing, but you know how the buzzwords sell magazines so to speak and if I could use a database on AWS that would allow me to market "using the AWS Cloud" as well. That brings credibility.
Glad it's this easy. It should be!