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Access databases

What do you think about Access databases?
good things / bad things

Peter

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Mirkwood

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MikeADST

While this is helpful - it would be nice to have a link to the original web site (if available) so we could view the figures.

Be forewarned that DAO and RDO are being replaced in VB6 onward with ADO (ActiveX Data Objects) which behaves a lot like SQL Server. DAO and RDO are still available in VB6 but only as 'legacy' platforms. Any of the new database tools that come with VB6 such as the Report Designer or the Data Repeater must use ADO.

Note also that the ADO run time files are pretty large. > 11 Meg (8M for the MDac_Typ.exe which includes all the files for ADO, 1.8M for DCom 98 and 1.3M for the VB6 Runtime files) before the first line of VB code is included. DAO applications can be distributed with less than 3.5 Meg of run time files. This means that DAO must still be used if you are developing an application that you want users to download from the internet since they will avoid an 11M+ download if they can. There are also some 3rd party database engines that will work with VB with tiny run time file sizes (<.3M) such as Artemis (www.luxent.com) or CodeBase (www.sequiter.com). But it appears the these are for non-complex database applications and they won't work with the new database tools mentioned earlier.

One last thing. When it comes to application file sizes I've been looking into Delphi and it looks promising. It doesn't require any runtime files except for the Borland Database Engine. And this too can be replaced with a 3rd party database engine such as Apollo (www.luxent.com). The resulting file size when zipped up will be much smaller than any VB database application.

Hope this helps.

MikeADST