In the "I told them this might not work" category...

We have a seven site WAN, connected through 56 frame-relay connections and
have been attempting to replicate a ca. 100meg Access database with relatively low daily transaction rate, to each site, using Microsoft Access indirect replication.

For various reasons, both known and unknown, this does not work well. Can
anyone help by telling us:

1. Are there examples anywhere, (books, magazines, web..) which describe a
scenario similar or more elaborate than ours? i..e seven site WAN with
Access replication keeping everything synched or Access-SQLServer?

2. What are the next possible options for scaling up? Right now I can
think of:
* Access - SQL-Server replication.

Three shared back-end server scenarios with a thin client front-end
* Microsoft Terminal Server
* Citrix Winframe
* a web-based application on the front end, accessing shared data on the
back end.

Since six of sites are really just workstations. One site, headquarters, currently has a server, and this would be the logical place for a SQL-Server. We want the field sites to be able to work against a local copy of the data, but to synchronize their changes with everyone else. I was thinking perhaps these could run MDBS ( the "headless" version of SQL-Server, and then synch with a SQL2000 server back at headquarters. All tables are currently in Access tables.


I'd appreciate any input.

Thanks.

Larry