Unusual FE bloating

[FPS, Romney]

The frontend I distribute is subject to a certain amount of bloating due (I
guess) to a few temp tables that are emptied and filled as needed for some
reports. The compacted FE is approx. 11,000 kb. Through normal use this may
increase to about 12 or maybe even 13,000 kb. It usually doesn't increase
much beyond this no matter how many more times the reports are generated.

There's a number of users with personal laptops with their own copy of the
FE and their own local copy of the BE. They all show the normal amount of FE
bloating noted above, except for one user whose FE typically is around
128,000 kb whenever I get a chance to look at it every week or so. The BE
appears as expected in terms of size.
The user says (of course) that they don't do anything unusual and deny any
operational problems or error messages. The FE is Access ver. 2000, running
under Access 2007. Other users with this same configuration don't show this
unusual FE bloating -- at least 10 times the expected amount.

Any ideas as to what might cause this kind of excessive bloating?
Thanks,
Mark

 

[Jerry Whittle]

That is strange. Does this particular user do anything different than the
others such as import data or work with graphic files? Are there special
queries that just this user runs?

Does this user create queries? Something like a badly formed query without
proper joins between tables can return a Cartesian product which can cause
bloat.

There is a very, very slight possibility that the computer is infected with
an Access-specific virus which is causing problems.

Are all the latest service packs and releases installed on that computer?

 

[FPS, Romney]

Jerry, thanks for the response.
The answer to your first two questions is "no", the person doesn't import
anything or create queries -- at least, the database is not setup to do
either of those things, plus the user is new to using a database and
probably wouldn't know how to do that anyway, plus they deny they are doing
anything other than what the database is set up to do (and I tend to believe
them).

I (briefly) thought that they were doing something unusual like hitting
File/Save or SaveAs when running reports ... but that would create something
external to the FE ... right? Nevertheless, I will examine the objects in
the FE (queries, reports, etc.) to see if anything looks unusual.

I could also try compacting their FE instead of simply replacing it ... just
to see what happens. Also, maybe I just need to run through a bunch of the
common procedures that the FE is designed for and watch what happens to the
size of the FE as I do this.

Access virus? ... hope not! The user doesn't report anything unusual in
terms of messages or database-behavior, plus I haven't seen any signs of
data corruption (of course, that doesn't mean it's not there).

They're running an Access 2000 FE under Access 2007. I don't know what the
latest service pack is for 2007, but I'll check.

I'll post back if I discover anything through further detective work.

Thanks,
Mark

 

[FPS, Romney]

I checked one of the other Access 2007 laptops and it does seem that the FE
grows considerably larger when run under that version: approx. 45,000 kb
under Access 2007 compared to the 11 or 12,000 kb under 2002/2003.
However, after repeatedly running the reports and repeated updating of the
local BE via a procedure which involves linking to the server and then
re-linking back to the local BE (emptying and filling a couple of temp
tables along the way), I still could not get the FE to grow more than 45,000
kb. So, I still don't know how the other person manages to get theirs up to
128,000 kb. Maybe all the computers using 2007 are doing this and I just
haven't noticed it yet on the others. Anyhow, I may have to wait until next
week to troubleshoot further as mentioned in my previous post.

 

[FPS, Romney]

Ok, the problem (if it is a problem) is that Access 2007 must do something
very different than earlier versions. I checked one of the other FE's being
run under 2007 -- different user -- and it also has increased in size
dramatically compared to the same version 2000 FE being run under Access
2002. Over the same period of time, and doing essentially the same
operations, the FE being run under 2002 increased from 10,984 kb to 13,628
kb. That same FE when run under 2007, increased from 10,984 kb to 138,000
kb.

Still haven't had a chance to step-through different processes to see if
there's a particular operation that gets handled differently by 2007
compared to earlier versions.

Mark