First, let me describe the scenario

There's an accountant (bean counter).
The accountant has customers.
Each customer has several years for which books are kept

In foxpro I had a root folder, containing a folder for each customer, each containing a folder per year


Some customers do their own bookkeeping - to a certain extent - mail the 'year' to the accountant who may make some changes and mail it back. The customer's database is readonly whilst the accountant has the year's database - and vice versa

So I'm thinking to do the same in .net with sqlserver

Mail: I think I can backup/restore the database in sqlserver

Sql server: The accountant would have an sql server whilst the customers would access the database with the native drivers.
The sql server can be 'told' to do certain things - like attaching or detaching databases

There are many customers - installing/maintaining an sqlserver service is not feasible in terms of work/problems. They have a 'light and simple' accountancy software - nothing very fancy. It runs without (too many) problems in foxpro and I would like to keep it that way.

Server Access: I think I cannot work with Windows authentication and need sql server authentication. Each database will be created with a specific owner, ie the same for all databases. The system has to be simple and transparant for the users


One of the thoughts was to put all the years of one customer into a single database. But that would not make things simple to exchange a part (year) between the accountant and the customers - would it ?


Does this sound like the 'right' approach ?



Thanks,