John Milbury-Steen said:
Hi Access Gurus,
I manage an Access database that has a front and back end. It's on a
Novell network and up to 5 people may be using it at once. Do I have to
kick everybody off the database before I make my daily backup copy of the
back end?
You should as a rule do the above. If you don't, then backing up the file
while users are writing to it means you might grab part of the file that is
in a un-determined state, or miss part of a users write. I mean, most server
backup software automatically skips files that are open, and this is done
for good reason. I will say that on many occasions I have made a copy of a
back end file that was in use, and opened by other users. The resulting copy
of the file I made was always fine. So, it can be done, but is certainly not
recommend. Does your company as a policy backup any other files from any
other systems that are opened, and in use? (I doubt it). By backing up a
file in use, you can't be sure that it will be ok..so, there is some risk,
and since you can manage this risk...then you should mange this risk!
What about backing up the front end, too? (By "backing up" I mean copying
the file to another location and renaming it.)
The above don't make sense. When you split a database, you MUST put the FE
(front end) on EACH pc. If you don't, you risk corruption, and instability
for your application.
Generally, I have several backups of the FE. I mean, normally, I take a copy
of the BE, place it on my pc. I then link my local copy of the FE to the BE
on my pc. I can now test, develop, debug, add new code, test new code, add
forms, delete forms. ..etc. After all your testing, and quality control
teams are happy with the new code changes, then you are ready to deploy you
next great version to your users. Of course, all those teams of people who
test, debug, and work on your code is likely the ONE person (you!). So, once
you done the changes, you will:
make the mdb into a mde:
You will then link the mde to the production BE on the server.
You will then distribute this new mde to EACH workstation.
At this point, you are now ready to go back to your mdb, and starting
working on the next great feature, bit is new form, report etc. The beauty
of the split system is that you can easily develop, test and work with a
copy of the data and the application. So, as a general rule, the FE will
never be opened from the server, and you should never really need to copy,
or backup the production FE, as that resides on EACH pc anyway.
