MLH <CR**@NorthState.net> wrote in
news:6s********************************@4ax.com:
I just used Tools / Database Utilities / Compact Database
in Access 97 for the first time. Unlike Access 2.0, it does
not ask me to furnish a filename for it to compact into.
It just launched headlong into a process that, after the
fact, had the result of overwriting the 44-meg previous
size file into an 8-meg file of the same name.
Has anyone ever experienced a data-loss during such
a compact operation under A97? Surely, the access
developer team writes a temp file for creating the compact
file or does some sort of backup to disk first BEFORE
overwriting the currently loaded file. Thoughts?
Experience?
If you open Explorer and watch the folder while Access is
compacting, you'll see it writes to db1.mdb, then deletes the
original mdb and renames db1.mdb to the original name. If the
compact fails, however much of db1.mdb that had been written at the
time the compact failed will be left, as well as the original file,
which is unchanged (since all the writing was into db1.mdb).
However, here's a simple rule:
Never compact without a backup.
I break it all the time, though, and have never once lost a minute's
worth of work.
There's on scenario where this is really critical, and that's with
replicated data. A compact can succeed without Access noticing
anything wrong, but replicability can be lost. Of course, you can't
copy replicated files (that creates dead replicas if you aren't
careful), so the way to protect your data is to synchronize it with
another replica before you compact it.
--
David W. Fenton
http://www.bway.net/~dfenton
dfenton at bway dot net
http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc 
