CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ms-accessvba
carlpett
carlpett

Reputation: 12583

Inherited Access/VBA program woes

10 years back or so, the founder of the company I work for decided that there didn't exist a product that did exactly what he wanted in quotation and billing (standard quotation and billing). So he visited the library, picked up "Access for dummies", stuffed a computer into his car and sat in a small house in the outback and set out to create the ultimate tool in quotation and billing (I'm not even making this up!). I'll spare you a review of this programs' many qualities.

Fast forward to today, and the server which is running the database is getting replaced. And the author has passed away. I tried simply moving the files to a share on the new server, but it seems to automagically open stuff from the old server. Disabling the share on the old server yields error messages about not being able to find files. So it seems a path is hardcoded somewhere.

Although I have a fair amount of programming experience, I have never touched Office/VBA-stuff, and I need to retire the old server fairly soon. I tried pressing "debug" while running the application, which brought up code for the forms, but I couldn't find any mention of a path anywhere. Didn't seem to be enough to be all the code though. Any idea how I can disassemble this type of program?

A short description of how it is used: The people in the economy department use Access 2003 (newer versions don't work) open a shortcut placed in a shared folder which points at /ProdDatabase/DB.mbd. They get a GUI and fill out whatever it is. The database now seems to copy itself to the location /Databases/<version string>/DB.mdb. Is this some standard "replication" feature of Access? I do not know if it was the original intent, but several people are often using the program at the same time, and when I asked them they said that "sometimes stuff can't be found after having entered it", so there seem to be some race conditions going on.

So basically, I need some advice on how to handle this (other than the mandatory "BURN IT!". I'm trying to find a replacement software, but there is some inertia in the organization). Mostly, how can I find all the source? Are there any ancillary files that would be kept with the mdb file I should look for? The entire tree is a mess of old versions of the mdb-file and what not.

If there is any information you need, just tell me. Since I don't really know anything about this type of program, I don't know what is relevant...

Upvotes: 1

Views: 301

Answers (2)

Knox
Knox

Reputation: 2919

The other answers all directly address how to go about improving the application. I agree with those and I also like @HansUp suggestion of getting an experienced Access programmer to sort things out.

However, you might find it useful to trick the application into thinking it's on the old server by creating a DNS entry that maps the old server name to the new server. Obviously you can't do this and leave both servers running. I've done this successfully not for an Access issue, but the Access program would not know the difference.

The only tricky part is that windows servers don't like to respond to anything but their own name unless you follow the instructions in Disabling Strict Name Checking

Upvotes: 3

Kevin LaBranche
Kevin LaBranche

Reputation: 21078

I tried simply moving the files to a share on the new server, but it seems to automagically open stuff from the old server. Disabling the share on the old server yields error messages about not being able to find files. So it seems a path is hardcoded somewhere.

Sounds like the author split out the database from the GUI front-end. This was/is a common practice for Access developers. Check out this article on viewing/changing the link tables path.

Upvotes: 2

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