Using Access to stage a SQL connection is about as bad an idea as I can think of. Access is an horrendous SQL client unless you set it up very carefully.
I'd say that your best setup, as you seem to agree, is Local client (written in whatever) > Local SQL server <> Merge Replication to central distributiuon server.
As long as you code the client carefully, this will let you do inserts and edits at any site, and all sites will have all the data. All the sites can also run independantly if the connection goes down.
I put together a very similar setup with offices in 6 different countries. Access clients talking to local SQL servers, each server dialled in overnight to the central server to exchange all the updates. Worked very well.
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Using Access to stage a SQL connection is about as bad an idea as I can think of. Access is an horrendous SQL client unless you set it up very carefully.
I'd say that your best setup, as you seem to agree, is Local client (written in whatever) > Local SQL server <> Merge Replication to central distributiuon server.
As long as you code the client carefully, this will let you do inserts and edits at any site, and all sites will have all the data. All the sites can also run independantly if the connection goes down.
I put together a very similar setup with offices in 6 different countries. Access clients talking to local SQL servers, each server dialled in overnight to the central server to exchange all the updates. Worked very well.