Corruption in Data (2000 SR2)

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Hi

Following on in the same vane as the post on corrupt forms. I have been thinking recently about corrupt data.

We are thinking about supplying (free so minimal support is wanted) to some of our ‘clients’ / ‘colleauges’ a small Access database that will allow them to import text files, add some data then export complete dataset to a text file etc…

These people that we will be supplying with the databases are ‘novice’ users. This is no problem from an application point of view, all the forms are / will be nice and friendly.

When distributing it, I intend to go to each site and install the databases for them … splitting the data from the front ends. The front ends will be .mde and the back ends will be Acc 2000 mdbs.

My questions, is in everyones experience, what is the best way to deal with corrupt data in the mdb file and reparing the database, given that we don’t want to have to support them too much?

I am thinking something along the lines of performing a ‘compact/repair’ on the data mdb file each time the front-end database is closed? Or something similar.

Any other ideas, or what you think of the above Idea?

Cheers

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Since you’re using Access 2000, you can set the backend up to automatically compact on close. If the database is not going to be really large, this is the simplest way to handle it. I’ve been working with Access since version 1.0 and can’t remember every encountering data corruption that wasn’t associated with memo fields. As a result, I avoid memo fields.

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As an aside, at work we have an Acc 2000 database without any memo fields and it needs repairing on a regular basis (about monthly).

I suspect this high rate of failure is due to
(i) 3 data entry operators entering into database
(ii) resonably large database

The option to automatically compact on close is a good one – hadn’t even thought of this…isn’t it funny how sometimes the obivous answers are the ones that you miss

Thanks heaps Charlotte this should deal to the potential problem.

J

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