[geeks] Access rant

[Lionel Peterson]

--- "Jonathan C. Patschke" <jp at celestrion.net> wrote:
> On Thu, 4 Dec 2003 jdboyd at jdboyd.zill.net wrote:
> 
> > They would?  I believe you can in Access write a frontend to any
> > database that has an ODBC driver without writing a single line of
> > SQL. You just link the ODBC tables in, then write queries the
> > normal way.
> 
> That is correct (to a degree).  In a previous life, I built
> applications this way that ran against both MS Access and MS SQL.
> But, at that point, it's almost as easy to use OBDC to talk to
> any number of different databases.

Current employer used Access, and is converting to MS SQL for all new
work. Our first converted system tested fine, but ran like cold
molasses once it entered production - they used MS Access as a
front-end to MS SQL (to speed the conversion).

Seems that every connection, in effect, copied the *entire* database
over the network, so that each user had their own unique copy (with
replication overhead as well) - sub-optimal.

The fix? Use ODBC connections, bypassing all the MS candy that killed
performance - it is funny that we had to migrate to the lowest common
denominator interface to get adequate performance...

MS Access was migrated off of because it corrupted too often, and we
routinely "filled" the database (max is what, 2 Gig?)...
 

=====
Lionel

"I am not into examining other peoples' dumps..." - Sheldon T. Hall

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