[AccessD] Missing records

Ha...backups...haha. It turns out that this program is backed up, or so
they are telling me, once a month...yeah, I know. Apparently the data
hasn't been altered since September...lost? me too...and the furthest
backkup is exactly the same size, w/exactly the same number of records.
I found out the program is called from my server, and we get a nightly
backup from this server, but I don't manage the backups, so I'm not sure
how far back I can go on this.

I think I am going to get a little more involved on this one. I'm going
to call the user myself...I'm beginning to wonder if they really are
missing anything. It wouldn't be the first time something was
over-reported initially, and the problem's scope actually changes to
something totally different.

I just thought of something...if the record count remains the same, but
records were altered, will the file size change? I seem to remember, in
another thread, that each record is x amount of bytes, no matter what
you put in them...i.e. their structure actually takes the space. If this
is correct, there could be changes.

Monthly backups...indeed! ;<(

>>> garykjos at gmail.com 2/3/2006 10:11 AM >>>
We had something similar happen here a while back. I was able to
import the missing records from a backup into the compacted and
repaired current copy - the first thing I did when they said things
were not working right was compact and repair - so that they didn't
lose other updates and adds since the backup had been done two nights
before. I created a third database and linked the main transaction
tables from both versions and did an outer join to see what was in the
old that was not in the new and then created a temporary table of
those missing records which I then reviewed to be sure they should be
readded and then finally did an append to put them into the current
table. Fortunately this database is pretty much denormalized so most
everything is in a single table and only that table was missing
anything. We blamed network issues but really didn't have a "for sure
that is what happened" explanation. It hadn't happened before or
since.

GK

On 2/3/06, John Clark <John.Clark at niagaracounty.com> wrote:
> We got a call from a department that has a small Access 2K db.
> "Something" has happened, and they are missing about a quarter of
their
> records. This was being investigated by a technician and I was just
> asked the following question:
>
> If a PC is "hard-booted" can an Access DB lose records w/out showing
> signs of corruption (i.e. the db still runs)?"
>
> I really don't know the answer to this question. I have had nearly
no
> experience w/db corruption, since starting with Access 5 years ago.
I
> used to use FoxPro...there are still some old FoxPro 2.6 (DOS) dbs
> hanging around actually...and corruption was a huge problem w/them.
>
> Anyone got any tips on this?
>
> Thanks!
>
> John W Clark
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Gary Kjos
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