New Access Version?

[Tony Toews]

There are terrible problems with conflicts between multiple
applications installing the MSDE, since a lot of commercial
applications use MSDE as their data store. I've run into with
conflicts between Veritas Backup and Blackberry Server.

It's a new form of DLL hell, and something that I really don't think
any of us need.

What about the Named Instances? I thought each such had it's own set of DLLs and
SPs? But I don't know much about those as I've never used them in production.

Tony
--
Tony Toews, Microsoft Access MVP
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[David W. Fenton]

What about the Named Instances? I thought each such had it's own
set of DLLs and SPs? But I don't know much about those as I've
never used them in production.

It has more to do with installers being stupid than with
capabilities of MSDE itself.

That is, just like DLL hell.

 

[Steve]

Why a backup program requires you to install MSDE is baffling. Our
consultants installed the program on our file server, and I realized
that now I have another service running on the box. Even if I had a
seperate SQL Server box, I would still need this running. A simple
link-list file would have been fine to keep tract of the file backup.

Steven

 

[David W. Fenton]

(e-mail address removed) (Steve) wrote in

Why a backup program requires you to install MSDE is baffling. . .

It's not to me -- it uses the MSDE to store its catalogs.

. . . Our
consultants installed the program on our file server, and I
realized that now I have another service running on the box. Even
if I had a seperate SQL Server box, I would still need this
running. A simple link-list file would have been fine to keep
tract of the file backup.

I see no real problem with the concept of a backup program actually
using a database to store its data.

It's Microsoft's implementation of the MSDE installers that is the
problem.

 

[Steve]

(e-mail address removed) (Steve) wrote in


It's not to me -- it uses the MSDE to store its catalogs.

I know, it was the backup program that requires it.

I see no real problem with the concept of a backup program actually
using a database to store its data.

I like keeping things simple and stupid. I just don't see the data
requirements of a backup program that requires the functionallity MSDE
(SQL Server lite). There is no real concurrency issues, nor the need
for triggers or stored procedures. It is not a client server system.
Some of us don't want to run SQL Sever on our file server.

Now maybe the backup program can be installed on a work station, but
our outside consultants dumped it on the file server.

 

[David W. Fenton]

(e-mail address removed) (Steve) wrote in

On Sun, 06 Feb 2005 00:18:46 GMT, "David W. Fenton"


I like keeping things simple and stupid. I just don't see the
data requirements of a backup program that requires the
functionallity MSDE (SQL Server lite). There is no real
concurrency issues, nor the need for triggers or stored
procedures. It is not a client server system. Some of us don't
want to run SQL Sever on our file server.

What database engine would you suggest? Seagate used to use Jet,
with predictable conflicts with Access when installed on the same
machine (not likely on a server, but I had the Seagate software
installed on my workstation to run my backup tape).

When the requirements for the db engine are:

1. runs on all versions of Windows.

2. can be licensed for 3rd-party distribution.

3. is supported by a reliable company.

your choices are pretty limited.

The Veritas catalogs are *very* complex, as is necessitated by
backing up NTFS volumes, where you have to store all sorts of
information about the files, not just the filename, date and path.

Second, the structure of the catalogs is by definition relational,
so you *do* need a relational database.

So, given those aspects, I don't see how Veritas could choose
anything *other* than MSDE.

The only question for me is why, if MS wants MSDE to be the answer
for every company asking the 3 questions above, Microsoft doesn't do
a better job of making MSDE install so that it doesn't step on other
runtime installations.

Now maybe the backup program can be installed on a work station,
but our outside consultants dumped it on the file server.

Backup programs belong on a server if they are backing up servers.

Maybe you don't know too much about backup programs?

 

[Steve Jorgensen]

(e-mail address removed) (Steve) wrote in


What database engine would you suggest? Seagate used to use Jet,
with predictable conflicts with Access when installed on the same
machine (not likely on a server, but I had the Seagate software
installed on my workstation to run my backup tape).

When the requirements for the db engine are:

1. runs on all versions of Windows.

2. can be licensed for 3rd-party distribution.

3. is supported by a reliable company.

your choices are pretty limited.

The Veritas catalogs are *very* complex, as is necessitated by
backing up NTFS volumes, where you have to store all sorts of
information about the files, not just the filename, date and path.

Second, the structure of the catalogs is by definition relational,
so you *do* need a relational database.

So, given those aspects, I don't see how Veritas could choose
anything *other* than MSDE.

The only question for me is why, if MS wants MSDE to be the answer
for every company asking the 3 questions above, Microsoft doesn't do
a better job of making MSDE install so that it doesn't step on other
runtime installations.


Backup programs belong on a server if they are backing up servers.

Maybe you don't know too much about backup programs?

Well - jumping in here - to my mind, a stand-alone database server service is
overkill for an application that has all components running on one machine.
It also has many more installation issues than an in-process database engine
like JET with DAO or ADO.

With JET, there is the versioning issue, but there have been very fiew JET
backward compatability problems that I've seen (except sp7). With MSDE,
there's literally another server process that must be corectly installed, and
must be started and stopped at the appropriate times, etc.

I just can't see why MDSE is preferable to JET here. Even when complex data
integrity rules apply, there's only one application using the data store, so
the enforcement can simply be in a data access code layer, and need not be
implemented as triggers, etc. In fact, IMO, triggers are much harder to write
and maintain than data access layers.

 

[Steve]

(e-mail address removed) (Steve) wrote in


Backup programs belong on a server if they are backing up servers.

Maybe you don't know too much about backup programs?

--

Veritas is able to backup servers which it is not located on. Maybe
you are using an older version?

The rest of your post, though, was informative.

Steven