M
Massimo
I'm working for a company which is migrating all its users from various
Windows and Office releases to Windows XP (or 2000 where XP is not usable
due to hardware limitations) and Office 2003.
There are some users which do a lot of Access programming, without knowing
anything at all about databases and development; they use Office 2000 on
Windows 2000 computers, which are quite low on RAM (128 or 256 MB);
nevertheless, they managed to build and use little DBs which then grew until
they became 200-300 MB monsters, filled with lots of forms, queries, pivot
tables and so on, up to and including critical company data. No one will
ever know why real DBMSs were never take into account.
Anyway, even if Access should definitely not be used for such tasks, they
are using it, and it (sort of) works; or at least it did, until we tried to
deploy Office 2003 on their machines.
When trying to open their 2000 DBs with Access 2003, everything works fine,
even on the really cumberstome ones (250 MB in size); but when they try to
create pivot tables based on queries, something strange happens: as soon as
the "new pivot table" wizard is completed, Access starts to load the whole
DB in memory before displaying the pivot table editor (there is a little
progress bar in the lower left corner), and memory usage becomes *quite*
high, bringing the computer almost to an halt (altough it doesn't crash);
subsequent editing of the table is almost impossible, since the program is
running so low it's unusable. This doesn't happen when they do the same
thing using Access 2000; or, if it happens, it has a much lesser impact on
system resources; I don't know if Access 2000 loads the whole DB when
creating a pivot table, but it seems not to be doing it, since the DB size
is the same but memory usage with Access 2000 is really a lot lower.
I've tried converting the DB to Access 2003 format and compacting it, I've
also tried opening it in single-user mode, but this was of no use.
I've also tried installing only Access 2000, but it doesn't work, since the
pivot table feature needs also (at least) Excel.
The company doesn't want to be running two or three versions of Office, and
they have good reasons for this (like the Exchange 2003-based company mail
and compatibility with Word and Excel documents created by other users).
Any ideas about this?
Thanks
Massimo
Windows and Office releases to Windows XP (or 2000 where XP is not usable
due to hardware limitations) and Office 2003.
There are some users which do a lot of Access programming, without knowing
anything at all about databases and development; they use Office 2000 on
Windows 2000 computers, which are quite low on RAM (128 or 256 MB);
nevertheless, they managed to build and use little DBs which then grew until
they became 200-300 MB monsters, filled with lots of forms, queries, pivot
tables and so on, up to and including critical company data. No one will
ever know why real DBMSs were never take into account.
Anyway, even if Access should definitely not be used for such tasks, they
are using it, and it (sort of) works; or at least it did, until we tried to
deploy Office 2003 on their machines.
When trying to open their 2000 DBs with Access 2003, everything works fine,
even on the really cumberstome ones (250 MB in size); but when they try to
create pivot tables based on queries, something strange happens: as soon as
the "new pivot table" wizard is completed, Access starts to load the whole
DB in memory before displaying the pivot table editor (there is a little
progress bar in the lower left corner), and memory usage becomes *quite*
high, bringing the computer almost to an halt (altough it doesn't crash);
subsequent editing of the table is almost impossible, since the program is
running so low it's unusable. This doesn't happen when they do the same
thing using Access 2000; or, if it happens, it has a much lesser impact on
system resources; I don't know if Access 2000 loads the whole DB when
creating a pivot table, but it seems not to be doing it, since the DB size
is the same but memory usage with Access 2000 is really a lot lower.
I've tried converting the DB to Access 2003 format and compacting it, I've
also tried opening it in single-user mode, but this was of no use.
I've also tried installing only Access 2000, but it doesn't work, since the
pivot table feature needs also (at least) Excel.
The company doesn't want to be running two or three versions of Office, and
they have good reasons for this (like the Exchange 2003-based company mail
and compatibility with Word and Excel documents created by other users).
Any ideas about this?
Thanks
Massimo