[AccessD] This on Sharepoint

John,

  It's true.  SharePoint stores everything like that.  I think the comments
you quoted are a lot of FUD.  SharePoint uses SQL Server as a data store.
If you don't trust that to get it right, we might as all quit right now.

Jim.

-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of jwcolby
Sent: Tuesday, June 05, 2007 1:52 PM
To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving'
Subject: [AccessD] This on Sharepoint

I just found this on a blog re Access 2007.  Since I don't use it, I can't
comment except to say, if it is true... OH MY GOD!

************************************************************

 Wednesday, October 11, 2006 2:13 AM by Mike

Do you know how data will be stored in SharePoint (SP) if you use SP as an
Access data store?  

In SP there is only ONE table that your data will be stored in.  That's
right, if your Access program has 5 tables (or a hundred tables) stored in
SharePoint, then data from the 5 (or 100) tables is intermingled into ONE
table.  The data table in SP is called UserData.

UserData is predefined by M$ to have 201 columns: 64 nvarchar(255), 16 int,
32 float, 16 datatime, 16 bit, 1 guid, 32 ntext, and 8 sql_variant (plus 16
non-user SP internal use columns).

So if you define a table in Access that has one integer column, and one
varchar(10) column and store it in SP, the table really has 201 columns (but
in this case only two columns will be used for your data).

There a few house keeping tables that SP uses, one is called Lists.  Lists
is where your column names are stored.  So there is a map between your
column names and the predefined SP columns names of UserData.  Every time
your data is read the map also needs to be read so that SP can send the data
to Access with the correct column names.  

The real columns names of UserData are (you guessed it): nvarchar1,
nvarchar2 - nvarcahr64, int1 - int16, float1- float32, datatime1 -
datatime16, bit1 - bit16, guid1, ntext1 - ntext32, sql_variant1 -
sql_variant8.

The rows of your table will be intermixed with rows from all other tables
and all SP "lists".  I'm not making this up!

Wow, all I can say is WOW WHAT A CLUGE!  It is boggling to even try to think
of the performance and interaction problems that can arise from such an
outright wacky scheme.

If you want to use SP with Access, there should be a big bold warning:

WARNING, STORING ACCESS DATA IN SHAREPOINT WACKY, IF YOU REALLY WANT TO DO
THIS, FIRST GO TO THE PHYSIATRIST TO CONFIRM THAT YOU ARE CRAZY.  THEN IF
YOU ARE CERTIFIED CRAZY, ITS OK, YOU CAN MAKE IT WORK, JUST BE SURE THAT YOU
DON'T STORE MORE THAN A FEW ROWS OF SIMPLE DATA AND FOR BEST PERFORMANCE
DON'T ALLOW THE SHAREPOINT SERVER TO BE USED FOR ANYTHING OTHER THAN YOUR
JUMBLED UP PSEUDO TABLES.

Note, if you have virtual arrays of octal-hyper 100Ghz processors with 100Gs
of memory (like the M$ Access team) you may find that storing Access data in
the SharePoint pseudo tables may actually work during testing.  Use real
data on real systems at your own risk.

Using SharePoint for Access data storage will be as useful as Microsoft Bob.

************************************************************

Does anyone out there know anything about this?

John W. Colby
Colby Consulting
www.ColbyConsulting.com 

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