Optimistic Locking (WIN 2000 Acc 97)

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Reagrding optimistic locking on a SERVER – Windows 2000 –
My wonderful Network guy says he believes that by turning it off, it would decrease performance slightly, but
help prevent database corruption. Our dbs have been locking up lately, and there’s been a bunch of corruption.
Apparently there has been some ‘disconnects’ with the network which has caused (I can’t imagine how) the primary key to be removed (The little key symbol next to the RecNum field). The db winds up with duplicate reocrd numbers because the primary
key is gone.
(database is FE/BE FE on individual PCs, BE on server. Usually 3 or 4 users at a time)

What are your opinions of removing the optimistic locking from the server?

The advanced settings for the database are attached.

Thank you,

Michael Abrams

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Your “wonderful Network guy” is engaging in wishful thinking. Network glitches are the number one cause of corruption in many environments – the other major cause is PC crashes. Optimistic locking doesn’t lock a record until you start to edit a record, but it won’t cause corruption. If you are actually getting locking situations, you would be getting messages that indicate that another user has changed the record since you began working with it, and asking you what you want to do with your changes. One of the most susceptible aspects of Access databases is the use of memo fields. If you have lots of those in your table design, corruption is more likely. (I should add that the record locking needs to be set in the front-end database, as the locking function is actually performed by the user’s PC.)

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