My team and I utilize MS Access databases across a network that disconnects frequently. Whenever a disconnect happens, there's a cascade of failure messages in Access and any records mid-entry are lost.
We know what's causing this, but it's beyond the level of my authority to fix. It's related to Windows 10 re-mapping the network drive whenever there's a group policy update, causing it to 'lose' the network drive for a split-second; long enough to disconnect the database.
As resolving the network disconnects will involve the IT department escalating it to the national level (Government computer system), I need a fix "now" so my form files don't generate a dozen errors and need to be restarted every time this happens.
What settings or code could I use to harden the forms files against network disconnects?
EDit: To answer questions
The data is kept in a separate file from the forms, allowing multiple people to work on the database at the same time.
I believe it's pointing to a drive letter for where the data file is. I don't know how to setup a server address location. My method of connecting was to browse to the file.
Related
Background
We use MS Access to manage some of our work, but often times our operations are in highly remote locations where cell or sat signal are the most reliable forms of connectivity. But the service isn't fantastic. Coverage will drop sometimes (more often than not) in the middle of an update.
Setup
Current set up has a Backend File which stores only the tables and a few simple routines that is stored on a cloud based server and a Frontend File that is stored on the user's machine. In order to make updating and usage of the system even feasible we had to create copies of the tables on the Frontend so that the user could run updates effectively then provided a sync button that essentially just appends the information from the Local Table to the Cloud Table. Otherwise the user would have to wait for the server to respond with each entry which was extremely slow.
Problem
However, nearly anytime they run this process it stops in the update and corrupts the file. So we switched to just using a simple excel export that they can then email to the main office and someone at the office imports the file to update their local tables and syncs to the Cloud Tables in the Backend File.
General Notes
I believe we've narrowed it down to being an issue with MS ACCESS and poor internet connectivity, because all systems work when the internet connection is even just reasonably decent. Are there any work arounds available that will resolve this issue?
I have an application that generates some reports at every hour. These reports are very critical (and sensitive) to the users and the only access is through the application (excel/pdf generation in memory with database) with previous user/password/role validation.
Last week the server that host the application shut down for several hours (hardware failure) and the users could not retrieve those reports (and i cant access to the db inmediatly).
My client needs to at least access the last generated reports. For example, if the failures occurs at 5 pm, he needs the report of the 4 pm.
So, i thought in store the reports in other place. The server/network administration is not my responsability. I dont have another server (and i cant avoid the network or hardware failures for ever), but i have a hard drive connected to the same server network (NAS).
Also i am thinking in storing the reports in Google Drive (client G suite with some encryption) or some other cloud service. But i am aware that i need permanent internet access.
¿What do you recommend me to do?
Have a nice day.
The best approach uses Nginx and creates multiple instances of the executable file and point to it if one instance stay down, the other instance will serve and the app will be live
The Question:
Is there some way to force close access so it doesn't need access to the back-end server in order to exit?
The Situation:
I have an Access 2016 DB. The back-end is on a networked share drive which is only accessible when connected to the lan or on VPN. On load there is a ping test to the server, if found it copies the tables to local tables, if not, it just tells the user can't connect and continues on using the old data. The users travel a lot and can't always be on the VPN so the idea is that the data they have isn't more than a few days old. BTW, did I mention the users are only consumers of information and not contributors so I don't care that they can't write to the back-end. The tables contain a few 100k records, the application just puts it in nice easy to search and cross-reference reports.
The Problem:
While this loads and runs really nicely regardless of them being connected to the lan or not, it will NOT close if they don't have a connection to the server. It doesn't produce an error which I could easily handle, it just hangs. Task Manager won't even close it.
Attempted Solutions:
I tried to unlink the tables and just use a temporary connection to the backend to load the tables when I need them at the beginning, however this meant the user was prompted by the Microsoft Trust Center about 8 times every single time they loaded this unless I have each of them actually open the back-end DB themselves, give them the password to do that, and none of that is practical.
Access doesn't play well with remote BE..if you want to be on the Remote Side with Access you have 2 options :
Connect via RDS..the user connects to the server via Remote Desktop ..everything is "local" ..so now issues on lost connections ...as long the RDP connection hold everything is smooth and more importantly you don't have BE disconnects that cause corruption or loosing data (hint : Using the RemoteApp technology it will seem to the end user like he/she is working locally...i am using it and its great)
Switch BE...as i said , is not wise to use Access BE via remote connection..in order to do that switching to MsSQL/MySQL/PostGre ...etc will give you the true remote connection capability
After playing with all the settings for a few days, I finally figured out what my problem was.
In an effort to test different settings to see if I could reduce file size at one point I turned on "clear cache on exit" in the Current Database settings. Turning this off fixed the problem. I had forgotten that was on, so it turned out to not be a programming issue after all.
I have an MS access system on a network with 15 users. The Front end is installed on users C:\ and BE on a mapped drive X:.The front end is about 8 meg, backend around 25.
Since day 1, one user constantly (every 30 mins at best) and some other users have a network interrupted error. Apart from being quite annoying to the users, this causes a temporarily masked/hidden issue where update queries run without error on 2 tables but do not update actually update/insert data.
A compact and repair resolves the issue, but is not feasible to run daily as users have the system open throughout the day. This is such a headache that I've had to write code to check that the data has been written after each query is run to detect if the issue is present.
Both myself and IT are 3rd parties to the business and are in the difficult opposing positions of "its your the network" and "its your database". Thankfully its all calm and peaceful but its not getting a solution for the client.
I've installed MS access FE/BE systems on over a hundred networks over the last 10 years and only ever seen the same issue on a peer to peer network. I'm aware that Access is very picky about network stability, but am faced with users who don't believe that there is a problem with the network as their email works and the internet radio doesn't drop out.
What I'm hoping to get assistance with here is either a tool / method that can test a network for stability / robustness with MS access and prove either one of us right/wrong with MS access or perhaps some advice on how I could move forward on this deadlock.
Thanks
I have seen a similar instance with damaged cables. A client of mine had mice that chewed through part of the cable, causing an intermittent interruption. Also, in another case, a cubicle wall was on top of the network cable (poor cable installation) and causing a short.
In order to bypass Access's need for constant network connection, I have my systems create local temporary tables for any view, and a local, 1-record table for any detail form that they are actively editing. Once they hit 'save' it runs the update query, and once done, no active connection with the server is needed again. It allows me to run much faster access systems, and eliminated the need for stable wireless or Ethernet. It does require quite a bit of structure change at first - as you will have to insert code to create local temporary tables in the FE file, and also code in an UPDATE Sequence in the AFTERUPDATE Form events too - but the time that it is has saved me and my users has been tremendous.
To put in in perspective, i have 1200+ users in the same Access database in a given week (sometimes 400+ in a day) and since they only 'pull' data from the server to make local table copies, there are only a handful of connections at any one time. My users can now dock and undock from their desks without needing to close the database.
I am currently using VB6 to connect to a MS access DB using DAO and I’m experiencing a very noticeable speed reduction when a 2nd user connects to the Database.
Here are the steps to reproduce:
Open the Database from computer A by logging into the software
Add records to the database via the software (takes about .4 seconds)
A second user logs into the software (Computer B), ie: this opens the database, displays todays transactions, but the user does nothing else
On Computer A, repeat the operation of adding records, now the operation takes approximately 6 seconds
Further info…
the operation continues to take aprox 6 seconds, even after Computer B logs out of the software
if you close and reopen the application from Computer A the operation returns to taking only .4 seconds to execute!
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks!
That is the way MS Access works. While it kind of supports multiple users, and kind of supports placing the DB on a file share so multiple PCs can access it, it does neither really well. And if you are doing both (multi-user and over a network to a file share) then I feel for your pain.
The answer is to run the upgrade wizard and convert this to an MS SQL Server instance. MS SQL Server Express edition is a good choice to replace Acess in the case. Note that you can still keep all of your code and reports etc you have in Access, only the data needs to be moved.
Just to be clear on the differences, in MS Access when you read data from the database, all of the data required to perform your query is read from a file by your program, no server-side processing is done. If that data resides on a network, you are pulling that data across your network. If there are multiple users, you have an additional overhead of locking. Each users program/process effectively dialogs with the program/process of the other users via file I/O (writing lock info into the networked file or files). And if the network I/O times out or has other issues then those files can become corrupted.
In SQL Server, it is the SQL Server engine that manages the data requests and only returns the data required. It also manages the locks and can detect when a client has disconnected or timed out to clean up, which reduces issues caused by multiple users on a network.
We had this problem with our VB3 / Jet DB 2.5 application when we transitioned to using newer file servers.
The problem is "opportunistic locking" : http://support.microsoft.com/kb/296264?wa=wsignin1.0
Albert is probably describing the same thing ; the server will permit one client exclusive access of a file, but when another chimes in, this exclusive access will "thrash" between them, causing delays as the client with the oplock flushes all it's local cache to the server before the other client can access the file.
This may also be why you're getting good performance with one client - if it takes an oplock, it can cache all the data locally.
This can also cause some nasty corruption if one of your clients has a power failure or drops off the network, because this flushing of the local cache to the server can be interrupted.
You used to be able to disable this (on the client - so you need to service ALL the clients) on Windows 2000 and XP as per the article, but after Vista SP2 it seems to be impossible.
The comments about not using Access / JetDB as a multi-user database are essentially correct - it's not a good architectural choice, especially in light of the above. DAO is also an obsolete library, even in the obsolete VB6. ADODB is a better choice for VB6, and should allow you some measure of database independence depending on how your app is written.
Since as you pointed out you get decent performance with one user on the system, then obviously your application by nature is not pulling too much data over the network, and we can't blame network speed here.
In fact what is occurring is the windows file share system is switching from single file share mode into multi-share file mode. This switching file modes causes a significant delay. And this also means that the 2nd or more user has to attempt to figure out and setup locks on the file.
To remove this noticable delay simply at the start of your application open what we call a persistent connection. A persistent connection is simply something that forces the network connection to remain open at all times, and therefore this significant delay in switching between two file modes for file share is eliminated. You now find that performance with two users should be the same as one (assuming one user is idle and not increasing network load). So at application startup time, open a back end table to a global var and KEEP that table open at all times.