Front/Back end: Exclusive access.

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Ed Mulock - 15 Oct 2004 14:27 GMT

Whaaaa. By Front end/Back end do you mean forms and queries vs tables?

I just "upgraded" to Access 2000 and find that development is now hamstrung
by the rediculous requirement that all the database users must be dumped off
the system to revise a form. Can this be true. ? How does spliting the
database help this situation? I fail to see any advantage other than making
the whole process more bureaucratic.

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Jack MacDonald - 16 Oct 2004 01:48 GMT

You work on a copy of the FE that is linked to the BE. When it is
fully functional, you copy it to each of your users. Separation of
programs and data allows you to work on a copy without any possibility
of corrupting the production database.

See Tony Toews site for a great explanation of the advanatages of
splitting. There is a link on the site in my signature.

>Whaaaa. By Front end/Back end do you mean forms and queries vs tables?
>
[quoted text clipped - 3 lines]
>database help this situation? I fail to see any advantage other than making
>the whole process more bureaucratic.

**********************
jackmacMACdonald@telusTELUS.net
remove uppercase letters for true email
http://www.geocities.com/jacksonmacd/ for info on MS Access security

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Ed Mulock - 16 Oct 2004 15:03 GMT

> See Tony Toews site for a great explanation of the advanatages of
> splitting. There is a link on the site in my signature.

"Corruptions are much more likely to happen in Access 2000 and newer in
shared MDBs or shared FEs. .... A97 was much stabler in this."

So I have noticed.

"You can get weird problems happening which we never took the time to figure
out. If I was working on a form, in Access 97, making changes in the FE on
the server then the users might get 'the form has been modified since you
opened it : do you want to overwrite it or save your form ?'. But they
couldn't save it with the original form name so they had to save it with a
suffix. This is a very distressing message for some users. <smile>"

So what. At least the changes got made ! Now I have to work at
night to make changes.

"There are no official Microsoft documents recommending you should split. "

Oh !

"When I split a fairly large combined Access 97 MDB which all the users were
sharing into a FE/BE in Access 97 I found somewhat poorer performance on
most things with very poor performance on complex forms with lots of combo
boxes and/or subforms and reports with subreports."

Great news

> You work on a copy of the FE that is linked to the BE. When it is
> fully functional, you copy it to each of your users. Separation of
[quoted text clipped - 19 lines]
> remove uppercase letters for true email
> http://www.geocities.com/jacksonmacd/ for info on MS Access security

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Larry Linson - 23 Oct 2004 04:06 GMT

Changes should be made to a separate development copy that is made available
to users _after_ the changes are implemented and have been tested. Making
changes to the live environment, on the fly, can be even riskier than having
multiple users logged in to the same copy of the front-end or monolithic
database.

Many users have, in fact, had multiple users logged in to the same front end
or monolithic database without problems. But some apparently-innocuous
change may lead, and often has led, to frequent corruption.

Whether or not you or I might consider that a product defect, Microsoft does
not -- it is "working as designed". In fact, I cannot point to any place in
the product documentation recommending multiple users in the same front-end
or monolithic database, but have seen the recommendation for splitting the
database. They even provide a splitter (though it isn't _necessary_ to use
it).

Best of luck with your project.

Larry Linson
Microsoft Access MVP

> > See Tony Toews site for a great explanation of the advanatages of
> > splitting. There is a link on the site in my signature.
[quoted text clipped - 48 lines]
> > remove uppercase letters for true email
> > http://www.geocities.com/jacksonmacd/ for info on MS Access security

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Ed Mulock - 16 Nov 2004 17:53 GMT

I split the database to no effect. It still locks up.

> Changes should be made to a separate development copy that is made
> available
[quoted text clipped - 86 lines]
>> > remove uppercase letters for true email
>> > http://www.geocities.com/jacksonmacd/ for info on MS Access security

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