Saving A2000 split mdb in A97 format

[Silvester]

I have an A2000 app split into FE mde & backend mdb. There is a great deal
of custom programming including custom menubars, etc.

Would I lose functionality if I save the fe/be to A97 format to cater to A97
clients.

Thanks for any advice.

 

[Arvin Meyer]

There is significant new functionality in Access 2000 (Conditional
Formatting is a major new enhancement). If you are not using that
functionality, you should not have any difficulty.
--
Arvin Meyer, MCP, MVP
Microsoft Access
Free Access downloads:
http://www.datastrat.com
http://www.mvps.org/access

 

[Jeff Boyce]

Silvester

If you wish both A2K and A97 "customers" to keep using their respective
front-ends, you will have to create the back-end in A97 (so both can read
the data).

If you only have data in the back-end, both A2K and A97 can read that
format, and, since the only "functionality" is in the front-ends, that
wouldn't be changed.

 

[Allen Browne]

You should have no problem converting the back end to A97, unless you used
some newer features such as Number fields of size Decimal (which do not work
properly anyway - http://allenbrowne.com/bug-08.html ) or cascade-to-null
relations (not supported in the interface of A2000).

Try converting the front end to A97. There are more things that can go wrong
here, but many apps convert fine.

If both work, place the A97 back end on the server, give the A97 front end
to the users who have A97, and the A2000 front end to the users who have
A2000. Both can use the same A97 back end without problem.

There will be a slight performance loss for the A2000 users, as the software
converts between Jet 4 and Jet 3.5. However, the A97 users might get a
slight performance gain compared to the whole thing in A2000.

There are a couple of tricks to optimise A2000 on an A97 b.e.
1. Create a custom property named "SubdatasheetName" on each of the tables
in the b.e. It's dbText type, and contains the value "[None]" (without the
quotes). This will prevent A2000 from automatically opening subdatasheets
whenever you open a form.

2. As always, make sure Name AutoCorrect is off in A2000 (Tools | Options |
General).

3. Also, turn off the option for record level locking (Tools | Options |
Advanced) since A97 does not support it, and some transactionalized queries
may not complete if this option is on.

 

[david epsom dot com dot au]

I have an A2000 app split into FE mde & backend mdb. There is a great deal

of custom programming including custom menubars, etc.

The export wizard does miss some customisation (including IMEX spec's ????)
Not because it doesn't work in 97, just because the export wizard doesn't
catch everything.

I haven't had any problem at all with custom menus.

(david)

 

[Silvester]

Well, the 1st message I get when I try to downgrade-version is that I woud
lose all security settings I had for the A2000 version.

So do I have to resecure the A97 mdb from scratch ?

 

[david epsom dot com dot au]

So do I have to resecure the A97 mdb from scratch ?

I don't think it's that simple. I think that conversion
ADDS all permissions to the USERS group, but I'm not
sure that it REMOVES existing permissions, or perhaps
it creates new objects using the current security settings
for 'new' objects in the A2K database?

If you have an empty, secured A97 database, with the
security settings correct for NEW objects, (i.e.
your old A97 development database with all the objects
removed)

And if your secured database has a simple security
model,

Then all you have to do is import all the objects,
and security is finished.


On the other hand, if you have a complex mixture
of individual security settings, then perhaps you
are better of writing code to walk through all the
objects and compare and restore settings?

(david)