Access Databases via Citrix

[gselliott]

We have a number of Access 2000 Databases that we running via Citrix using Access 2000 runtime. Most seem to run very well and have only encountered a few problems, although we have recently discovered that a couple of the databases when in use utilise a large amount of that particular servers CPU over 50% in some cases.

This only seems to be the case for a small number of our databases and the rest will run without taking up anywhere near as much as the mentioned few.

I was wondering if anyone has had a similar problem or if anyone knows what could be using so much of the server’s resources??

 

[pdx_man]

Hmmm, I run Access from home to work via Citrix and have never had that issue. What is the nature of the DB? Is there a lot of processing that is done in the Access DB? Are you using a SQL Back-end? Can some of those processes be moved to the SQL Back-end? Any type of recursive procedures? How many users?

 

[gselliott]

The database is used to store customer invoice information, it does not use an SQL back-end so the processes can't be moved, there are a number of forms that are used to enter invoice information and various calculations are made which are fed back into the tables etc using various queries and VBA code. There is only really 1 person using this particular database at anyone time.

 

[pdx_man]

Hmmm Hmmmmmm ... how do you know that it is using 50% of the CPU. Are you looking at the Preformance or the Processes tab under Task Manager? Which one?

 

[gselliott]

It is the Process tab we are looking at.

 

[pdx_man]

OK, you're alright. Go to the Task Manager and hit the F1 key. This will bring up the Help file. Click on the Search tab and enter process counters. Select the process counters topic and select the CPU Usage option. It tells us there that what is listed here is a percentage of time that a process used the CPU since the last update. If you look down below in the status line of the Task Manager, you will see the TRUE CPU USAGE of all the processes. If you click on the Perfomance tab, you will see this also. I kinda consider the CPU heading in the Processes tab as "Who has the CPUs attention", not actual usage. When you are actively running a process you will see this spike to 99%, that just tells me the process has the CPUs full attention. Surely it is not using 99% of the CPUs capacity.

Does that make sense?