View dependency information in Access 2003

  • Thread starter Thread starter Simon Shutter
  • Start date Start date
S

Simon Shutter

I'm considering whether to upgrade to Access 2003 and one of the appealing
features is the advertised ability to view dependency information in the
current version. Can anyone with experience with this feature rate its
usefulness and compare it to other tools like those of FMS and other
vendors.

Thanks
 
Frustrations:

1. The dependency info only works if you have the Name AutoCorrect options
checked. That's about the quickest way to corrupt your database.
Realistically, you can only consider enabling those options on a *copy* of
the database that you don't mind corrupting. For a short list of some of the
older known problems with this Name AutoCorrupt, see:
http://allenbrowne.com/bug-03.html
The list is not up to date with all the current issues, but should be enough
to give you the idea.

2. Don't expect the dependency info to work if you have objects that refer
to other objects that don't exist. I tried it on a database that the client
knew had queries and forms that referred to tables that had been deleted.
Attempting to run the code to loop through the dependencies constantly
crashed (shut down by Windows.) After a couple of dozen crashes, restoring
the database, and restarting the machine, we gave up the whole Object
Dependency thing as completely unworkable.

YMMV.
 
Back
Top