My connection to the backend of a split database dropped and now I have a local database. How do I split it again? (1 Viewer)

hkc94501

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So I was working yesterday in a coffee shop with free wifi that knocks you off and forces you to log in again after an hour.
Access never complained about being disconnected.
While I was unknowingly disconnected I continued adding data to the database.
The shared backend file is on OneDrive so it looks like a local file on my system
Fortunately no data was lost because Access seems to have made local copies of everything.
So now I have an unsplit database again but when I went to the database splitter wizard it told me that there would be no tables in the backend!

So my question is, what exactly happened?
Why does Access not know how to split the DB again?
What should I do to recover the shared DB?

In the end, really the only thing that matters is that no data was lost. I am really the only user of the DB (I have colleagues who have access but they aren't actively using it.) One solution, probably what I will do, is to simply save it all as a local DB and then resplit the newly saved version.

Thanks
 

theDBguy

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Hi. Using a cloud storage for the BE is not recommended, because it's more probe to data corruption. The way I understood how OneDrive works is you get a local copy of the file in the cloud, and the OneDrive service synchronizes it with the copy in the cloud. If you weren't connected to the Internet, the files should have synchronized as soon as you get reconnected.

I have a feeling you still have a split database. The fact that the splitter Wizard says there's no table to split could be proof that you still have a split database.
 

The_Doc_Man

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I'm with theDBguy on this one. OneDrive is (currently) never a solution to Access sharing because it doesn't support the required protocols that Access uses. OneDrive will copy whole files but it probably uses FTP or a variant thereof. To make Access work correctly, you need Server Message Block (SMB) protocols because that allows partial file sharing. Last I looked, OneDrive didn't allow that.
 

Pat Hartman

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We don't use a Cloud drive for the BE to an Access app NOT because it is more prone to corruption but because it doesn't support the necessary sharing protocols. Doc has written extensively on this.

If you are the only user of this BE and you want to keep it in the cloud dor convenience, then it is best to change the way you work with it.

Instead of linking the FE to the Cloud drive, download the BE from the cloud drive to your local drive and link to the BE on the local drive. This completely isolates you from network blips. When you are done working, you can replace the Cloud BE with the local BE to save your changes.

NEVER, EVER share an Access database on a Cloud drive, even with yourself apparently:)
 

hkc94501

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Requiring an SMB remote mount seems kinda antiquated in today's cloudy world.
I would have done that but we don't have any SMB servers in the company and everybody's remote.
We do have Sharepoint but I fear that would be worse than OneDrive. I actually think that the onedrive integration may be the only feature of SharePoint that we use.

I should have added this to my first description but I wanted to keep it short.
The linked file manager
Hi. Using a cloud storage for the BE is not recommended, because it's more probe to data corruption. The way I understood how OneDrive works is you get a local copy of the file in the cloud, and the OneDrive service synchronizes it with the copy in the cloud. If you weren't connected to the Internet, the files should have synchronized as soon as you get reconnected.

I have a feeling you still have a split database. The fact that the splitter Wizard says there's no table to split could be proof that you still have a split database.
I think I can confirm that the database is still split. What confused me, and still does, is that when this all happened it messed up my navigation pane modifications. I had created groups of objects in the navigation pane to make things a bit more orderly. What alarmed me was that all of the table links disappeared. The group headers were still there but there were no longer any links to the tables. The tables hadn't gone away, they were all listed as unassigned objects. Other local objects (queries, forms, reports) were unaffected.
 

The_Doc_Man

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Requiring an SMB remote mount seems kinda antiquated in today's cloudy world.

Access is over 20 years old. What's that when converting technology years to people years?

Seriously, SMB enables users to diddle with the insides of files whereas OneDrive's protocols do not. Access COULD NOT WORK as a shared database if it could not reach into the middle of a file to look at a single table's contents, something you can't do via OneDrive. Access might be "antiquated" but it is also still "functional." When you are sharing pictures from the cloud, you want the whole picture file anyway. When using the cloud in place of a fax to send a whole file, again it is "whole file only."

Cloud servers often use MQTT (Message Queue Telemetry Transport) or HTTP (Hyper-Text Transport Protocol). Some clouds like DropBox use FTP (File Transfer Protocol). OneDrive uses WebDAV which in turn uses HTTP. (Note: They also can use the "Secure" variants such as HTTPS.) Most of the modern cloud servers use a publish/subscribe type of service which is not quite the same as client/server. They are more oriented towards the UDP family of protocols (non-persistent connections with each message acting as a single transaction) whereas SMB needs the TCP family's protocol structure that includes message sequence numbering to verify that no data in a series of consecutive messages has been skipped.

MQTT is oriented towards low-bandwidth environments, as it originated from older telemetry systems where high-speed communications was not possible, either technically or economically. It originates from remote-monitoring applications such as SCADA (Supervisor Control).

SMB allows Access and other utilities to reach into the innards of a file and also works backwards, by allowing print spoolers to grab pieces of files for printing purposes. Remember, Windows PRINT operations allow you to print selected ranges within the file, which means you DON'T want the whole file sometimes. SMB does that. The protocols used by cloud systems don't do that.

Just as a passing comment: SMB servers are not required because SMB is peer-to-peer, not client-server. I won't put words into someone else's mouth, but I will offer a conjecture that the reason OneDrive doesn't support SMB is because they KNOW that sending a larger file that way will "screw the pooch" if the network drops. And because of the low-bandwidth orientation for cloud systems, SMB would be terribly slow.
 

Pat Hartman

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Requiring an SMB remote mount seems kinda antiquated in today's cloudy world.
Access is ancient as far as software goes and as Doc explained, it requires specific file sharing support to work. If you can find a better substitute for Access that runs on the desktop, I'd love to hear about it. If you can find a better substitute that runs on the web, I'll love to hear about it.
 

CJ_London

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Since the issue is with the backend, consider using a web based rdbms such as Azure for the backend. Comes at a cost of course.

Other alternatives are to use terminal server or citrix, both of which work very well with access, but again, comes with a cost.
 

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