Patch Lady – Access bug will be fixed sooner versus later

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https://support.office.com/en-us/article/access-error-query-is-corrupt-fad205a5-9fd4-49f1-be83-f21636caedec?fbclid=IwAR3ZgqIjmgtPe6kJbZoDGU9M5gnUdzMZZ
[See the full post at: Patch Lady – Access bug will be fixed sooner versus later]

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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abbodi86, GreatAndPowerfulTech

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Perhaps I am a little overly critical but, it seems to me that any prior release QA testing regimen would catch an error like this hands down. It really is emblematic of the anecdotal deterioration in MS patch quality over the last several years.

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It’s easy to say why didn’t they…. this is a bug that you only find if you use Access.  If you install it, Access still opens, everything LOOKs okay.  You have to have a functional database to get the bug.  IMHO patch quality has not changed in 19 years.  Seriously.  There will be bugs that you always will only see if you actually USE the program.  That takes a real database and real users.  Even when they had old fashioned testers I’d doubt they would have caught this bug either.

Look at me, I advised to install the IE zero day patch and it wasn’t until Monday morning when we actually used a line of business app that I realized how impactful it was to certain types of printing.

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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warrenrumak

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Reminds me of a time when we installed a set of fixes from a vendor to help with performance problems on a SQL database.

We installed the fix it helped a lot for several months…. until the early hours of Sept 5, 2007 when everything came to a screeching halt.

See, the database had a thing in it that would generate a date/time string like “Wednesday September 5, 2007 @ 12:30:00 AM”.  But it was trying to stuff that 41 character string into a field that could store 40 characters maximum.  (Reducing the size of fields was one of their performance optimization)

This bug would therefore only happen on every Wednesday in September, because “Wednesday” has the most letters of any day of the week, and “September” has the most letters of any month.

At the time I remember saying that if this crash had happened a week later, we probably would’ve blamed Patch Tuesday. (Though if I remember right, there were no Windows security patches that month….)

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warrenrumak wrote:

But it was trying to stuff that 41 character string into a field that could store 40 characters maximum.  (Reducing the size of fields was one of their performance optimization)

This bug would therefore only happen on every Wednesday in September, because “Wednesday” has the most letters of any day of the week, and “September” has the most letters of any month.

… and that’s English only, now imagine supporting multiple languages.

And this is why a proper QA procedure for a database is tedious.

Yes, a previous employer did produce a “layered software product” that depended on a database engine, among other things. The QA procedure did include fast-forwarding the entire test lab into various points in time and running it through those, such as timezone changes, February (29th) and December (day 366) of leap years and…

And it was a bit of a bother because that was one way only, databases really don’t like it when time runs backwards.

(Also ISTR that procedure caught at least one bug related to the product’s database server component being on one timezone and client on one of the timezones that differed in minutes too, during a DST change.)

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warrenrumak

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The click-to-run version of Access 2016 seems also to have a fix. Search for updates – Build 12130.20390 shall fix the query bug.

Fix for Error 3340 in Access 2016 (Update KB4484198)

Ex Microsoft Windows (Insider) MVP, Microsoft Answers Community Moderator, Blogger, Book author

https://www.borncity.com/win/

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woody

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I have Access 2013 running on Windows 7. I rolled back the Office update but that didn’t help. I ran the Nov 27 fix but got a message stating something like that fix was not for anything on this computer. I reinstalled Office on one computer, turned off updates and everything is working on this one computer. I have a couple of more computers set up the same way. Is there anything else I can try without reinstalling Office on the other computers?

Thanks in advance.

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Have you installed the December updates as the fix is in there.

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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Susan Bradley wrote:

Have you installed the December updates as the fix is in there.

The Window 7 update or Office 2013 update?

I will check tomorrow . Thank you.

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They reinstalled office without checking the version number so it remains a mystery what version the computers were on. They did notice automatic updates for Office was on so it should have had the latest version. Reinstalling works.

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