what are the pros n cons COMPACT ON CLOSE ?

[Rajtomar]

Hi all.

I have taken a lot of benefit from these group and most of my queries
during developing a software were answered here, now after deployment
of the software i have few questions to be clarified so that no
untoward incident happen in future. the questions are :

(i) Is it absolutely safe to use COMPACT ON CLOSE option? if not then
in what cases?

(ii) If the DB is split in BE and FE than BE doesn't compact on close
so what is the way for that?

(iii) If there is a way for compacting BE on close what if other FE's
are still connected to it and .ldb file is still keeping the BE file
locked.

(iv) There is a backup command button in my FE which runs a batch file
to copy BE and paste it in another location. now there are 5 FEs so
even if one FE is connected than the BE could not be copied as
the .ldb file will keep the BE locked. So what is a better way to
backup data.

(v) Also i did not have a code to copy a central BE file from a
network share and paste it at somewhere else in network share. I can
do it in local PCs but cant get a command for network hosts.

(vi) When there are 2-3 FEs connected to the BE and suddenly network
connections drops then what are the consequences.

 

[Tom van Stiphout]

On Thu, 4 Dec 2008 00:39:18 -0800 (PST), Rajtomar

I never use it, because it only compacts the FE which is expendable,
and when I close an app I am in a hurry to do something else and don't
want to wait for a compact.
Why would you think it is not safe? Experiences?
To compact the BE I schedule a Windows Task on the server to do that
just before the nightly backup runs:
<path_to>msaccess.exe <path_to>be.mdb /compact
Users are instructed to close their apps, and their computer, before
they go home. There are also options to have an Access app auto-close
after N minutes of inactivity. Find the KB article if you are
interested in that. It's not a perfect solution.

-Tom.
Microsoft Access MVP