[AccessD] Suitability of Access For Task

Erwin Craps - IT Helps Erwin.Craps at ithelps.eu
Tue Mar 6 14:41:37 CST 2007


Hi

I have 2 apps (MDB's) runing each every 5 minutes 24/7/365...
One apps is an archiver, open outlook checks for new e-mails AND check
for fax files based on a log file AND checks for presence of FTP files
to process them.

Secondly I have a report app that checks every 5 minutes if it needs to
generate a report in excel and e-mails or faxes it using outlook.

I'm running both for 6 years now. 
I must say I'm pretty disapointed. 
Sometimes I have a year no crashes at all, sometimes, mostly after an
office update, it crashes 5 times a day...
The Office update from a couple of weeks ago made my databases crash
several times. Since a week they don't crash anymore.
I did not changed a thing in my app, maybe a new update was installed.

When first using A2K3 when it was pretty new I had crashes several times
a week (sometimes a day) for probably 6 months. I believe until SP1 and
after I done some code modifications to bypass the problems. 

For example I build in some delays of 5 to 10 seconds after closing
Outlook to wait that Outlook fully closes before I continue dooing
someting else.

At a giving time I need change my code to verify if the database is in a
readonly state, because when the backup (Veritas) started to backup the
database it puts it in a read-only state causing the database to crash.
It work 3 or 4 years fine before that. Don't know if that was a windows,
office or veritas problem... The database is now 800MB big, so backing
up takes some time making the problem more frequent.


One thing I learned, don't leave the database running all the time, had
some serious leaking memory and setting object problems especialy with
excel. For some reason if something goes wrong with the excel object in
one Access session, all Excel object approaches seem to fail even is the
code is correct.
Use the task scheduler from windows to run the database and exit it when
finished, so you always have a clean start and avoid memory leakage.

Another problem is that when the database crashes, all further runs are
paused until you manualy intervean the error message Access give on
screen.
Wow, if it crashes it will not run until you do something.

Another issue is that when running on a server, that server needs to be
logged on. Access does not run with beeing logged in.

Also sometimes Access start in a size like the app has been dragged to
minimum size, a small rectangular, don't know why, posibly after a minor
crash. Some of my form resizing codes failed on that because Access
windows size is to small, had to take that in acoount to, etc etc 


These are my experiances. Based on these I have no doubt about not using
access for this purpose anymore.
Access is not stable enough if you want to keep it running al day all
night without intervening.
At the first occasion I have to rewrite the reporting engine I would
certanly go for a real service running a a server independent, if such
is posible when generating the report in an Excel object?!
I looked at VB6, you can write a service in VB but it was not adviced
because the vb runtime does generate Visual (form) errors. But I suspect
running a VB app for this is far more stable.

Some tips when do using Acess.

-Check readonly state of database when opening (BACKUP!!!).
-Don't use any forms (event not for progress monitoring)
-use a log table for logging progress or errors, so you can monitor
later what went wrong.
-Quit the apllication when having an an unforseen error, so your
scheduled task keeps running dooing at least some of the jobs.
-Have something to verify if the app still runs, like send a daily
e-mail with a status. When you don't get the e-mail, you know somethings
wrong.
-Set the printer from Access each time you need to print. When using the
server also as a Terminal Server and a users log on it set the default
printer from the admin to another printer.




Erwin
















 

-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Mark A Matte
Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2007 8:42 PM
To: accessd at databaseadvisors.com
Subject: Re: [AccessD] Suitability of Access For Task

Larry,

I have an A2K db that also runs 24/7/356...it checks an FTP site every 5
minutes...if there are files...downloads...clears FTP site...analyzes
data...and sends email.

I have NOT built an AUTO Archive yet...so about once every 3 months I
manually archive and compact.  Other than that...I have had no issues.

Good Luck,

Mark A. Matte


>From: "McGillivray, Don [IT]" <Donald.A.McGillivray at sprint.com>
>Reply-To: Access Developers discussion and problem 
>solving<accessd at databaseadvisors.com>
>To: "Access Developers discussion and problem 
>solving"<accessd at databaseadvisors.com>
>Subject: Re: [AccessD] Suitability of Access For Task
>Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2007 13:08:54 -0600
>
>Larry,
>
>FWIW, I have an app that basically runs unattended 24/7/356.  It runs 
>in a terminal service session on a remote server, and monitors the 
>status of several directories on several servers and manages and 
>summarizes the contents of files that it finds there.  It's designed to

>ignore, retry, and/or send alarms if network difficulties prevent 
>access to the various target servers.  Otherwise, it stops only when I 
>bring it down for maintenance/upgrade, etc..  It gives me danged few 
>problems running in this way.
>
>HTH,
>
>Don
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
>[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Lawrence 
>Mrazek
>Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2007 10:29 AM
>To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving'
>Subject: Re: [AccessD] Suitability of Access For Task
>
>Thanks John:
>
>On your app, does Access basically stay "on" all of the time, or do you

>schedule it to also close and reopen? I've had server apps that open at

>specified times, run a process, then close ... Those have worked quite 
>well for me.
>
>Basically, just worried about the application timing out or freezing on
me.
>
>Any recommendations on barcoding add-ins for Access?
>
>Larry Mrazek
>LCM Research, Inc.
>www.lcm-res.com
>lmrazek at lcm-res.com
>ph. 314-432-5886
>mobile: 314-496-1645
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
>[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of JWColby
>Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2007 11:56 AM
>To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving'
>Subject: Re: [AccessD] Suitability of Access For Task
>
>I don't see anything there that is not doable in Access.  I run Access 
>on a server where it does this type of monitoring.
>
>
>John W. Colby
>Colby Consulting
>www.ColbyConsulting.com
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
>[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Lawrence 
>Mrazek
>Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2007 12:24 PM
>To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving'
>Subject: [AccessD] Suitability of Access For Task
>
>Hi Folks:
>
>I have a possible project that will need to:
>
>1. Monitor a dbase table for changes, when a certain event is seen, 
>read an ID number and print it in EAN128 barcode format.
>2. Monitor another dbase table for a specific event, then write an ID 
>number to a temp table.
>3. Scan the barcode from #1 and compare it the ID number from #2 ... If

>they match, write success codes to a table, if they don't, display 
>error and write info to a table.
>
>Given that this app will have to be running 12-18 hrs per day; it will 
>usually have to deal with 30-50 of these events per day, should I be 
>looking to write it in VB.NET?
>
>
>
>Larry Mrazek
>LCM Research, Inc.
>www.lcm-res.com
>lmrazek at lcm-res.com
>ph. 314-432-5886
>mobile: 314-496-1645
>
>
>
>
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