Question Is 2007 more stable than 97? (1 Viewer)

[gregoryagu]

I have a client that wants to upgrade from 97 to 2007, the biggest issue being that the 97 db gets corrupted every couple of weeks. Of course, it is easily compacted and repaired, but we would like to eliminate the corruption entirely.

The database is already split (which helped a great deal of course.)

I know the answer to this already (Of course it is more stable) but the client wanted to see some input from other's experiance in this area.

The database is used by about 50 concurrent users.

Thanks,

Greg

 

[LPurvis]

>> I know the answer to this already (Of course it is more stable)

Why would you suspect that?
FWIW Access 97 is widely regarded as one of (if not the) most stable releases of Access.
While ACE suffers from the same fundamental limitations as Jet, Access 2007 as an application was considerably more buggy upon its release.
(Bear in mind that often Access releases which are largely fixes for a previous release do very well - despite not adding loads of features. The two prime examples of this being 97 and 2003).
2010 as the "fix" for 2007 would break that mould - as it brings a lot to the table in itself. Time will tell how stable it is.

Ultimately you have bigger problems.
If your application is constantly corrupting, blame something other than 97.
Hint: That you have 50 users is a great starting point! ;-)

Other factors - dodgy network and network cards (that's 50 of them to check).

There are plenty of non-Jet/ACE BE alternatives to explore.

Cheers.

 

[LPurvis]

FWIW some background on the limitations can be found in Albert's comprehensive piece http://www.members.shaw.ca/albertkallal/Wan/Wans.html

Cheers.

 

[boblarson]

The database is already split (which helped a great deal of course.)

And EACH USER has a copy of the FE on THEIR machine, correct?

 

[gregoryagu]

Yes, each user has a copy of the FE on their machine.

Leigh: You make some interesting comments, and the link to is very interesting; Access on SharePoint - that's a new one to me.

I do like the Look and Feel of 2007, but if the back end isn't any better, I will just leave the data in 97 and move over the front end. I already have part of the Front End running from 2007.

And the corruption is only once in a while, maybe once a month lately. And I do think as pointed out that it's the network that has been the issue, not Jet.

Greg

 

[boblarson]

Yes, each user has a copy of the FE on their machine.

Just had to make sure. It would surprise you how many people do NOT have that and that is almost guaranteed to cause corruption if it isn't that way. So, hopefully what Leigh gave you will help track it down. Also, I know I've had issues with memo fields at times due to what users try to put in there, so just another possible thing to look at.

 

[gemma-the-husky]

also FWIW, its my belief that access 97 backends perform quicker than later versions - irrespective of the front end. all you want is for the back end to fetch data.

i certainly think corruiptions/errors dont point to A97 being the problem in itself

 

[LPurvis]

Memo fields can corrupt yes - but again I'd cite that due to an external reason. They're just more prone to the causes than full DB corruption.
(Technically a DB is flagged as corrupted by Access far more often than it actually is genuine corrupt - simply that a write sequence wasn't completed leaves the MDB with a bit flag which Access determines as corruption. It's deliberate and designed to force a compact to reset that.)

As for 97 being quicker regardless, well...
I can see why that could be considered. It didn't support unicode, so for every text field you're pulling over half the amount of data, but really Access versions are optimised to match well to their target format. (That even includes DAO).
I've had 97 format BE's perform as stinkers compared to the same backend in the appropriate Access format as the FE is.

Cheers.