Comments

# Bart Wessels' Blog said on September 12, 2007 3:08 PM:

Clint heeft een post die voor Access adepten interessant kan zijn. Je kan een Webcast volgen over Access...

# M. David Matney said on September 12, 2007 11:21 PM:

I just thought I would share with the access community what access 2007 is doing to our business.  A Little history first....

Our system was developed originally using access 200, later upgrading to access 2002.  We did not upgrade to 2003 and went from 2002 to 2007.  SAME CODE (well, ok 2007 introduced alot of bugs and problems and we had to fix those bugs and problems, code that used to work in 2002 stopped working)

After months of correcting problems that occurred as a result of upgrade, we finally released our 2007 version of our business management system we call BizWizard which his running close to 100 businesses with multiple site locations and an averger per business usage of 10 users simultaneous.

No problems our 2002 release

Now Im getting CONSISTENT reports from customers on reports not printing.  We have seen bandwith usage on local networks climb from 65% usage to maxing out at 100%  all from upgrading to the 2007 system which is basically the same system as the 2002.   The types of changes we had to implement were things like

me.insideheights = xxxxx

me.insidewidght = xxxxx

because all of our forms were all of a sudden 1/2" high by 1/4" wide

the largest complaint is around the reports.  NOT A SINGLE LINE OF CODE or anythign was changed about any of the reports.  One customer tells us that a report took 5 minutes to print, when it used to takes 3 seconds

Another customers reported waiting 30 minutes for a print to spool when it used to take 3 seconds

Here is the latest from yet another customer who is now irate and as he puts it "has little faith in our product anymore"

==============================

I can only assume that you are being swamped by other customers with similar problems to ours.

If I sound a little miffed it is because I am.  At this point our confidence in your product is pretty low and we are just as frustrated as you are.

I have installed a 10/100 mbs switch in my system to replace my hub, but without much effect.  We can limp along as long as we do not have the bizwizard system running on more than two machines at once, and they have to be the most powerful.  Printing customer invoices is still pretty difficult but working if we are patient. but our patience is running a little thin.

Maybe I will hear from you tomorrow.  Against my better judgement we are continuing to enter new orders into the system but still cannot mark any

of our invoice customers closed after they have picked up their orders and had an invoice printed.

Up to my ears....

==================================

I have been extremly patient which bouts of frustration with the access team. We do not use ADP, so I don't see how the ADP issue effects us.

You didn't disclose to us what you DID to access 2007.  I personally notice speed issues and my development machine is Win 64-bit - 8gb ram 1x2 TB Raid 1 drives with Quad Core Processing and yet I noticed speed issue.  One particular screen that took previously about 2 seconds to load on my machien now takes 8 seconds

On my clients computers which are near as powered as mine, that screen took 4 seconds to load and now takes 30 seconds

Printing that was 3 seconds is now 30 seconds to 30 minutes - I have been logged in via remote support on these clients computers and have seen these reports site for 20 minutes, and then same report the next time taking 10 seconds

I need a resolution from the Access team on these problems.  My faith in Access is dwindling Extremly fast.  

# grovelli said on September 13, 2007 1:46 PM:

Darned I Missed it! Any way to see it again?

# Zac Woodall said on September 13, 2007 6:32 PM:

David, it sounds like your solution pushes the limits of Access in lots of ways, and this is great.  We love to have people out there exercising the product.  

On the performance front, it is a common misconception that 64-bit computers are faster than 32-bit computers.  There are known performance considerations wtih 64-bit Windows.  64 bits is twice as much data as 32 bits, and it takes longer to move around the system and process.  What this means from a practical standpoint is that, 64 bit is not faster than 32 bit for every day tasks.  However, 64 bit can be much faster for software which needs and is explicitly architected to take advantage of that extra memory space.  For example, major data centers housing 10s or 100s of terabytes of storage, or complex research systems which need to perform extended calculations of very large number sets.

Access 2007 does not have a 64 bit version, so all the code you're running is running in 32-bit mode on that machine.  In your case, it sounds like you are running the Access client on a major server machine.  In order to be able to address your full 8GB memory space, you'll need 64-bit windows.  The computer you have is optimized for performing server tasks, as opposed to running client software.  If you had consulted me on what machine would be the fastest for Access development, I would have recommended a 3GB 32-bit Vista machine.

On the bug front, please follow up with me directly via email with a detailed list of the issues you're seeing and reproduction cases for each.  We'll see what we can learn and whether these are known issues with exising workarounds or KBs in place.  FWIW, these are exactly the kinds of things that are very hard to discover through internal testing, and the exact reason that we offer beta releases for pre-release testing and feedback.  We' would love to hear from you when 14's first release is out!  

A large number of customers are having great experiences with Access 2007, I'm really sorry that your solution in particular is plagued with so many problems.  I think that if you take time to go back and look over all the comments on the blog, you'll find that your situation is far more extreme than most of our readers.  

One last thought: the usual way to get this type of issue dealt with is to work through each individual challenge with the very compitent and capable folks inthe Access newsgroups or on UtterAccess.  Our primary focus in the product group is on development, and our time is scheduled accordingly. As such, we don't have as many free cycles as we may want to be able to directly provide customer service for each of our 100M Access customers.  The most active members of the Access community have a direct communication line to the product team, and for issues which do not have known workarounds or fixes, they do a great job making sure those issues hit our radar.  

# M. David Matney said on September 14, 2007 2:12 AM:

Actually Zac, I use 64-bit on my machine only to take advantage of the extra memory which I need for graphics design, as well as running multiple instances of virtual PC OS's simultanouesly.  I do much of my testing using virtual pc, and then move it to a live network for final testing..  thats the only purpose for the 64 bit (8gb memory baby - love it)

The reason this is being posted here is so that you guys can fix the problems.  Utter access is a great place to pick brains.  Since the development team is blogging this stuff, this information is getting directly into the hands of the development team.

I am starting to wonder if the performance issues are due to the dropping of Jet and picking up on ACE

We have alot of legacy code that is DAO based from years ago.  Could the new ACE engine vs. DAO access on that new engine be a performance degradation the way ACE is handling DAO type requests?

As to e-mailing you directly, what e-mail address?  And I agree, we prob use access for more than just a "contact management system" we have built a full scaled business management solution and yes have pushed every envelope cause Access is great for RAD development. VS. VB which takes alot more time.

Prior to 2007, even thought we pushed the envelope, we had not performance issues.  

# Zac Woodall said on September 14, 2007 12:01 PM:

Hmmm ACE vs. Jet... if that is really the cause, I'd love to know it.  We've got a bunch of stuff we do to try and be sure that perf doesn't degrade version to version.  From our internal tests, we haven't seen anything like the slowdowns you're describing at the ace (vs. Jet) level.

That said, I do know about some perf issues related to the way our new filtering logic works.  I think we've addressed those in SP1.  Have you tried the SP1 beta?  If you're not on the list, I'll see what I can do to get you a copy...

# Zac Woodall said on September 14, 2007 12:03 PM:

And... for David or anyone else who wants to send me mail, if you're signed in to MSDN, you should be able to click on my name to view my profile (which contains my email).  

Thanks!

# M. David Matney said on September 14, 2007 1:24 PM:

I checked your Profile Zac, no e-mail address available that I can see.  I figured may I have to login to see it, but when I login it says my account is still pending approval.  I created my account prob a month ago

# clintc said on September 14, 2007 1:33 PM:

David--click on the Email link in the This Blog section on the right. This will send email to Zac and myself.

# Relationship Compatibility said on June 9, 2008 4:44 AM:

Mor Hezi, the Access product manager, is giving a web cast targeted an at new users Thursday September 13, @ 9:00 AM pacific time. This is a great opportunity to introduce Access to co-workers that want to learn more about how to track information. Microsof

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