Occasional attempt to lock exclusively

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Carl Rapson - 18 Oct 2005 15:01 GMT

I have inherited a "monolithic" (UI and tables in one .MDB) multiuser
database (one of several). I am planning to redesign the database into the
preferred FE-BE structure, but this is one of several projects I have
inherited and it may be a while before I can get to it, as there will be
some re-writing involved (and management has other priorities).

I have been having a problem with a couple of users who occasionally get the
message "You do not have exclusive access to the database at this time. If
you proceed to make changes, you may not be able to save them later" before
the initial form is displayed. This message doesn't always appear, and I
have only seen it for a couple of the users, and only for this particular
database. Usually, the user can click through this message (it appears quite
a few times in succession) and continue into the database, and everything
appears to work properly after that (changes are saved, for example).

I have investigated the possible causes of this message, and I found 2
possibilities. The first is that I am attempting to open a form in design
view, which (as far as I can tell) I'm not. The second is that there is a
workgroup information file (.MDW) in the same location and with the same
name as the database file, which there isn't. I'm not using workgroup-level
security (or any of Access' built-in security, for that matter).

As I said, this problem only occurs occasionally, appearing and disappearing
(seemingly) at random, only with this particular database, and only with the
same few users. There are a few other monolithic databases still in use, but
I have not seen this problem with any others. No other user has ever had (or
at least reported) this problem. I have checked, and all users (including
the few who have this problem) have exactly the same access permissions on
the folder where the database file resides.

Until I get the opportunity to redesign this database, my question is, what
else can I look for? What other circumstances might cause this message to
appear?

Thanks for any assistance,

Carl Rapson

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Douglas J. Steele - 19 Oct 2005 00:12 GMT

Access 2000 and newer all require that you have exclusive access to the
database in order to save changes. Sometimes changing the Filter or
RecordSource of a form is enough to make Access think you're changing the
form, so you'll get that message.

Splitting into a FE and BE should solve the problem. What rewriting do you
think is necessary if you split it?

Signature

Doug Steele, Microsoft Access MVP
http://I.Am/DougSteele
(no e-mails, please!)

>I have inherited a "monolithic" (UI and tables in one .MDB) multiuser
>database (one of several). I am planning to redesign the database into the
[quoted text clipped - 36 lines]
>
> Carl Rapson

Reply to this Message

Carl Rapson - 19 Oct 2005 16:17 GMT

Thanks for the information. I'll check and see if anything is attempting to
modify the RecordSource.

The original developer used a lot of Seeks, which have always caused
problems for me when I split out the tables. I'll have to go through and
modify the code to use FindFirst instead. Unless, of course, there is a
trick to using Seek with linked tables that I'm not aware of - not unlikely,
I'm sure.

Thanks,

Carl Rapson

> Access 2000 and newer all require that you have exclusive access to the
> database in order to save changes. Sometimes changing the Filter or
[quoted text clipped - 44 lines]
>>
>> Carl Rapson

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Larry Linson - 21 Oct 2005 19:31 GMT

> Thanks for the information. I'll check and see if
> anything is attempting to modify the RecordSource.
>
> The original developer used a lot of Seeks, which
> have always caused problems for me when I split
> out the tables. ... FindFirst ...

No, Seek simply does not work on Linked Tables.

It would be even better to rethink the design and open recordsets on a query
that only retrieves the record of interest. "Seek" and "FindFirst" imply
that you are opening a large recordset and locating the record within it.

Larry Linson
Microsoft Access MVP

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Carl Rapson - 24 Oct 2005 16:21 GMT

> > Thanks for the information. I'll check and see if
> > anything is attempting to modify the RecordSource.
[quoted text clipped - 12 lines]
> Larry Linson
> Microsoft Access MVP

Larry,

Thanks for the Seek clarification; that's what I suspected. And you're
right; since I'll have to do some rewriting anyway, I'll see about re-doing
the recordsets to make it more efficient.

Thanks,

Carl

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