Sluggish performance

[mscertified]

Users are complaining that an application is getting sluggish. They say this
seems to have happened after I archived some old data thus reducing the size
of the back-end. I would have thought this should have improved performance.

Anyway this database is fairly big: front end (shared by 6 users) is 18meg
and back-end is 110 meg. The main table has 48,000 rows and needs to be
joined to 2 other tables each of which has around 50,000 rows.

I'm looking for ideas on what to look for to improve perfromance. The users
are claiming 10-15 second response times are not unusual.

This is an Access 2003 MDB front-end which is shared (each user does not
have their own copy). Also there is a separate front end (used for reporting)
that is used by one other person.

 

[Allen Browne]

Work through each of the items on Tony's list
http://www.granite.ab.ca/access/performancefaq.htm

You do realize that splitting a database and then putting everyone in the
same front end is almost the worst-of-all scenarios? It's slower than an
unsplit database, and you get none of the isolation-of-users that splitting
provides.

 

[mscertified]

Thanks for the response.
Unfortunately, that is the way they wanted it until now. Maybe I can
convince them otherwise. The other important thing is that all the users but
one have now gone VO (virtual office) and work from home via terminal server
software. They complain of things like typing into a control nothing appears
then all the characters appear at once. This has nothing to do with Access
right? Is it true that in such an environment, Access has to continually
transfer the entire database back and forth?

Thanks for any suggestions.

 

[Allen Browne]

Working over a slow connection has its own issues, but if you have to do it,
then something like TS or Citrix is the right approach. As you say, the
display issues here are nothing to do with Access. The TS session runs on
the server (presumably!), so only pixels and messages are being transferred,
not data.

 

[David W. Fenton]

Unfortunately, that is the way they wanted it until now. Maybe I
can convince them otherwise. The other important thing is that all
the users but one have now gone VO (virtual office) and work from
home via terminal server software.

By "VO" do you mean that they are using Windows Terminal Server
running in an office? Or is this some product from someone other
than Microsoft or Citrix?

They complain of things like typing into a control nothing appears
then all the characters appear at once. This has nothing to do
with Access right? Is it true that in such an environment, Access
has to continually transfer the entire database back and forth?

No, it is not true at all.

And it's certainly not the case if your users are running their
sessions on a Windows Terminal Server.

If they *are* running in that environment, then there's something
wrong with the configuration of the terminal server if it's causing
those kinds of problems (either that or major bandwidth
limitations).