After deprecated JET Engine ...

[FuzMic]

Hi mates
Since Ms deprecated the JET Engine there are a few questions that i hope some of you gurus out there can throw some light quickly.

1 How does the new 07 database engine (.accdb) compare with Jet especially in terms of autonumbering and multi-user access?
2 Would you recommend using this new engine to replace Jet? I read about the certification issue that someone has faced (see below). I presume installing AccessDatabaseEngine.exe v2 10/3/08 will allows Access 02/03, VB6 to use ODBC to link to it's tables?
4 Life is easier using the autonumber for the Primary Key in Jet's table. Is there a similar DB engine that will do the same.
5 If we link to a SQL Server through ODBC from Access, the autonumber still exist in the linked table from the SQL Srv. Does this mean that SQL Srv also supports autonumbering.

Thanks in anticipation. Cheers!

Following is someones views on .accdb
Quote
DONT MOVE TO ACCESS 2007. I highly suggest you making the move to competitor products, we are starting to. This fiasco of access 2007 is a major problem. I prefer RealBasic and MySQL.
I finally get a code signing cert only to find that I cannot even sign my accde files, they wrap them in an accdc file
I have 5 accde files that need to be part of a completed working application system. I can even bite the bullet and sign an accde file with a code signing cert, but when forced to put it into a accdc file and then when its run, it extracts the file out and asks the user where to put it
SO MUCH FOR USING INSTALLSHIELD which is designed to keep components in places where they are expected to be.
Unquote

 

[boblarson]

Hi mates
Since Ms deprecated the JET Engine

I think you've been sadly misinformed. MS has done nothing of the sort and it is alive and well in Access 2007 and 2010.

 

[Banana]

To extend things a bit.

Originally, Jet was a part of Microsoft Data Access Components (MDAC) and shipped with Windows, so theoretically, one could use Jet on XP without Access being installed at all. As such, Jet and DAO wasn't under the Access team's control back then, they had to cooperate with other groups responsible for Windows/MDAC. It is in the realm of MDAC where Jet/DAO has been deprecated.

However, Access team now has since took over the Jet, renamed it to ACE and finally added new features to it (e.g. multi-valued fields in 2007 for example) and certainly will continue to use the technology and develop it.

Fundamentally, ACE is 100% backward compatible with Jet so using earlier .mdb files is quite transparent to ACE.

As for signing issue, I'm afraid I'm not quite familiar with the issues as I mainly worked with signing on 2003 but not 2007.

To answer the rest of other questions:

1) SQL Server's version of autonumbering is called IDENTITY.
2) Practically every RDBMS engine has a form of autonumbering, only called by different name and implemented differently. Two more possible keywords: AUTO_INCREMENT (mysql), sequence (Oracle & PostgreSQL)


Maybe if you would describe a bit more about the issue you are having we can make a specific recommendation instead of talking in generalities... What do you want to accomplish with signing/certification and how you would want to use it?

 

[FuzMic]

Thanks for yr responses

Hi Boblarson
I got this from reading the following link & some extract

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms810810.aspx

Deprecated MDAC Components
These components are still supported in the current release of MDAC, but they might be removed in future releases. Microsoft recommends, when you develop new applications, that you avoid using these components. Additionally, when you upgrade or modify existing applications, remove any dependency on these components.

* Microsoft Jet Database Engine 4.0: Starting with version 2.6, MDAC no longer contains Jet components. In other words, MDAC 2.6, 2.7, 2.8, and all future MDAC releases do not contain Microsoft Jet, the Microsoft Jet OLE DB Provider, the ODBC Desktop Database Drivers, or Jet Data Access Objects (DAO). The Microsoft Jet Database Engine 4.0 components entered a state of functional deprecation and sustained engineering, and have not received feature level enhancements since becoming a part of Microsoft Windows in Windows 2000.

Of course Access 07 allows DAO to run but if the above is right, then did i interpret the above depleting wrongly.
From my experience a .mde application created in Access02/03 will run exactly the same using Access Runtime 07 within XPWin. In Vista i face the need to change to ActiveX Data Objects RecordSet 6.0 Library, the ActiveX Data Objects RecordSet 2.8 Library that i use in Ace02/03 can't be found in Vista.

Hi Banana!!
There are a 2 comparision on performance, etc in my mind.
1 Compare the BackEnds using .accdb (ACE database engine) vs .mdb (JET db engine) with Access02/03 .mdb/.mde as front end.
[Note: I failed to link to .accdb using ODBC new driver for .mdb/.accdb ie AccessDatabaseEngine.exe v2 10/3/08]
2 Compare .accdb vs .mdb as Front End.
All these i think have bearing whether to continue to write applications in .mdb or switch over to .accdb.

Forget about the signing issue since i have not faced problems with it as yet.

Regards.

 

[boblarson]

I think you didn't read Banana's reply carefully. Jet is not deprecated for Access. It is no longer included in the MDAC but it is included in Access (the new ACE is JET and is under the control of the Access team now).

 

[FuzMic]

Bob understand what both of u say.. I was just thinking that since both Access team and DAC team are both within Ms then they should be singing the same song but they are not then.

Still hoping u would throw some light comparing ACE with JET in terms of multi-users concurrent access. Specifically at times I have MsAccess02/03 hanging, if 2 or more users open the same table in an .mdb in shared mode and locking at record level.