A2003 and Visual Source Safe

[Bob]

Allen Brown states that Access 2003 has serious problems with VSS (see
below). Starting VSS and clicking Help/About says we have version VSS
8.0.50727.42. The startup splash screen says version 5. So I assume
we have version 5. What are the serious problems? We were
considering using VSS starting in March, but not if it's a bad
decision.

Regards,
Bob


http://allenbrowne.com/tips.html

Allen Brown's website reports: Bugs introduced by SP3 for Office
2003. I am concerned about VSS with A2003 SP3. Please elaborate.
As every developer knows, fixing one bug may introduce another.

Unfortunately, Service Pack 3 introduced a range of new Access bugs:

Combo boxes go blank if their RowSource is a table field that has
something in its Format property.

Access 2003 crashes if a combo's RowSource is a table with more than
31 fields. Demo.

Visual Source Safe has serious problems with A2003 SP3

 

[Danny J. Lesandrini]

I've used VSS (ver 6.0) for a few years on Access projects, but only in
single user mode. I keep everything checked out and I'm the only one
checking things in. It serves more as a backup and easy way to restore
a particular version of an object than it does a collaborative tool.

I wouldn't necessarily recommend using it if you didn't have to, but I
haven't ever had any problems using it, except for the extra steps required
and the performance hit you take every time you open the app to develop.

 

[david]

If you use source safe integration (don't), Access uses the
SaveAsText, LoadFromText methods to import and export
objects, which are held as text in Source Safe.

The LoadFromText method is not the same as creating
objects from the Access UI..

In particular, when you connect a record source to a form in
Access, fields are added to the Fields Collection of the form,
and fields are added to the Properties Collection of the form.
When you use LoadFromText to create a form, fields are only
added to the Fields Collection, not the Properties Collection.

MyForm!MyField works,
MyForm.MyField doesn't work.

Creation of form and report properties is different in Access
2003 than it is in Access 2002-, so it is quite possible that this
area is even more broken in A2003 than in previous versions.

The first release of A2003 did not include Source Safe Integration,
but the control was released later, after people noticed that you
could in fact install the previous version of SSI. AFAIK, there
was never any explanation for this.

By the way, having all your forms and reports in VSS as text
is really handy for doing version comparisons, but VSS doesn't
let you do that! You have to go in as admin and change mode,
then next time you use Access the mode changes back to OLE
interface again... SSI is not only slow, sometimes the build or
update process fails. We gave up, and just used it as a binary
repository for mdb's.

(david)

 

[Paul Shapiro]

I've had better experience with VSS and Access. I think it's important to
keep updated with the most recent VSS versions, service packs and hotfixes,
and the same with Access. The VSS updates can be hard to find.

I have experienced intermittently the problem David describes:

MyForm!MyField works,
MyForm.MyField doesn't work.

but it's not at all consistent. Most of the time the . syntax works fine.
Sometimes it worked fine for years, and then complains. That part is
annoying, but was reasonably infrequent. I haven't had the problem at all
using VSS 2005 and Access 2007.

The VSS differences utility has always worked fine for me and is one of the
biggest benefits. I think I did originally "uncloak" (the VSS term for stop
preventing normal VSS features) my Access projects, but I only had to do
that once.

The other major benefit is being able to create clean databases from
SourceSafe. I do that before releasing code to clients, and it's of course
handy of the current db gets corrupted.

The biggest VSS problem I had with Access 2003 was that an mdb developed in
Access 2003 and then re-created from VSS would have some corrupted forms if
it was opened in Access 2007. The fix for that bug was to open every form in
Access 2003 before ever opening the db in Access 2007. I wrote a small code
loop to open and close all forms, which solved the issue.

 

[Bob]

All,

Thanks for the advice. We will evaluate and decide if VSS should be
used or not.

Bob

 

[david]

For reference, do you mean that you open every form in data view,
or open every form in design view?

(david)

 

[Paul Shapiro]

In data view. Here's the code loop that I ran in Access 2003 once after
creating the db and before ever opening it in Access 2007:
For Each frm In CurrentProject.AllForms
strFormName = frm.Name
Select Case strFormName
Case "frmTableOfContents", "frmAbstractDialogModeDupSub"
'Don't open these forms because they generate errors when used
this way.
Case Else
DoCmd.OpenForm FormName:=strFormName, View:=acNormal,
WindowMode:=acWindowNormal
Call pjsWait(lngMilliSecs:=250) 'API call to sleep the
current thread for 1/4 second so the form finishes opening
DoCmd.Close acForm, strFormName
End Select
Next frm

This fix was discovered by MS tech support. I had found I could mostly avoid
the problem by deleting the hotkeys assigned to labels on the form, but this
fix was 100% reliable in my use and didn't change the forms.

 

[Bob]

All:

I am now looking for publications that cover integration between
Access (2003) and VSS. Recommendations would be appreciated. I have
Visual SourceSafe 2005 Software Configuration Management in Practice
by Alexandru Serban, but it does not discuss any how-to regarding the
integration between A2003 and VSS.

Ragards,
Bob

 

[Paul Shapiro]

There isn't much to know because the integration takes care of most things.
Microsoft has some minimal documentation either on their website or in the
online Access help file. Access developer books often have a brief section.

I don't have the Access 2003 version, but the "Access 2002 Enterprise
Developer's Handbook" by Paul Litwin, Ken Getz and Mike Gunderloy has a
chapter on VSS integration. That's the 2nd volume of a 2-volume set. That's
one of my favorite Access development book, and maybe there's a 2003
version. If not, and you don't find anything else you like, the 2002 version
is still probably close enough.

You have to download the VSS add-on from the Microsoft website. I think they
called it the Access 2003 Source Code Control AddIn. Install that and the
SourceSafe options appear in Access.

I exclude the SourceSafe data folders from antivirus/malware scanning both
by the server and the workstations, to improve performance and remove a
possible source of corruption.

You might want to do a google search of this newsgroup for a few issues
using VSS with Access 2003.