Different builds of A2K (A2K – SR1)

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I developed my database in Microsoft Access 2000 (build 9.0.4402 SR-1). When I test run the database in a test computer with Access 2000 (build 9.0.2720), two things puzzled me:

(a) I have a textbox with function Format(Now(),”dd/mm/yyyy”) to show current date. It works fine in my development machine, but the test machine showed ‘#Name?”, meaning the Format() function wasn’t understood by the test machine. Why?

( My database built a query with a WHERE condition which contained function Left(fldName,2). Again my development machine works fine with the query; however the test machine gave me an error message: “Function is not available in expression in query expression ‘left(fldName,2)'” and my database could not run as expected, or as is run in the development machine. Reasons?

I moved the database to another similar test machine, the same errors occurred.

If a database works differently on machines with different builds of MS Access 2000, then I can’t be too sure my program will run at all as I have no control over user’s machine! For a person who have experience developing solutions using DOS Clipper 5.3 and plain old Turbo Pascal, it comes as something unacceptable. Shall I move to Visual Basic instead?

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I’ve seen strange things happen like this when a required library is not installed.

If you go into the VBA window, then TOOLS –> REFERENCES make sure there are no missing references.

From recollection, a very common problems is DAO 3.5 and DAO 3.6

You may find that there is a reference to DAO 3.5 or DAO 3.6 , when the other doesn’t exists.

I don’t know why it affects the FORMAT or LEFT functions, but I have certainly had this problem.

Let me know how you get on.

Jayden

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As Jayden suggests, it sounds like you may have a broken reference. However, if you are planning to distribute this application to other machines, you should be doing it using the Office Developer and creating a setup, not just copying the database to another machine. The reason should already be obvious to you–you can’t be certain that all the necessary libraries and the correct versions of same will be on the target machines. Nor is it reasonable to compare any kind of Windows application with DOS apps, which carried all their necessary files (such as they were) with them. Windows apps rely heavily on shared libraries, but since different versions of the same library may have the same name, things can break between versions or builds.

I would never be surprised if an app built under a service release broke on a machine without the SR installed. The patches in the service releases fix a variety of minor and not so minor problems, any one of which could bite you on a machine without the patches. As for moving to Visual Basic, to what purpose? You would still be using the Jet database engine and the same database dlls, and it’s much harder to build the interface in VB. If you did create the database in VB, you would still need to create a setup to install it on other machines, since you could not depend on the VB runtime and necessary libraries being in place on the target machines.

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Thanks, Charlotte. I am a long-time user of MS Windows but just beginning to program in it. I am glad I shift to writing database program in Windows and changing my habit and mindset which was orientated to DOS platform along the way. I know more about intricacies about Windows programming. Another reason for me to move to Windows platform has to do with printers – more and more new printers provide no drivers for DOS printing!

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