Re: SharePoint Services

Albert, Salad and David:

Your comments, thoughts and recommendations are appreciated and well
received.
So in response to clarify my situation, I will point out that :
1. We are 23 users spread over a 'wide area' of the northeastern US
(Buffalo, NY to Boston, MA to New York, NY)
2. We are but a small department in a very large utility corporation with
an IT Department that is extremely diligent in its protocols, protections
and updates.(Actually, they are a pain in the ass)
3. IT does not support our Access app explicitly as the app is considered
part of the company's standard MS Office Pro 2003 running on an XP OS. IT's
only direct involvement w/ our MSAccess app is that we were given a
dedicated directory upon which our app resides along with approx 50 other
files/folders in our dept. Also, because it sits on the network, it gets
backed up nightly.
4. The app is a 'split' mde with only the BE sitting on the network
directory.
5. There is a persistent connection to the BE on startup which is a hidden
little two-record form.
6. In that our company operates on the 'cheap', I suspect there are
bandwidth issues because IT constantly complains about our department's
video-streaming usage and the bandwidth problems that it causes.
7. All of the applicable tips put forth by Tony Toews and Allen Browne were
adopted as well as those in other publications such as Helen Feddema's
Access Application Development and another very useful one entitled 'Access
Annoyances'
8. The network is slow per se in that sometimes our 'Outlook' email program
drags (but how do you tell IT that their network is not configured properly
(especially when I am definitely not an IT professional and would have no
idea how to "fix" their configuration.
9. I do believe that too much data is being trafficked over the network and
am looking to cut that down by such things as having only the user's case
opened by the user's ID instead of opening all records to him.
10. When I use my Demo copy of the app (BE and FE placed on my 'C' drive),
it 'flies'. On the network, the Live version crawls. I point this out
because of the references made to 'bad design' or 'inefficient design'. How
do you tell if it's 'bad design' if it works beautifully as a Demo
(everything on the HD) and crawls when the BE is on the network?
11. I haven't yet gotten IT's approval to move all of the other
folders/files down one level on the directory, so I don't know yet if that
will improve the speed.
12. Albert- that is a great question that I will ask my IT person regarding
the amount of users and network traffic on my current server because I have
no idea. I don't know how many servers are in use or their current usage--I
do know there are 18k employees in the company, half in the 'field' and half
of which are office types w/ computers at each desk. Maybe a dedicated
server will work to speed up the app.
13. Are there any books you'd recommend on how to take advantage of
'limited bandwidth' by better design of the app?
14. My original question was answered and that was SharePoint (and SQL
Server) will not necessarily 'speed up' anything. It's in the design (back
to No. 13 above).

Thanks again for all of your input...

Earl


"Albert D. Kallal" <PleaseNOOOsPAMmkallal@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:fMyFl.53674$0%2.42035@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"Earl Anderson" <isobadd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:49e6a149$0$5940$607ed4bc@xxxxxxxxx

I didn't read/see anything in this thread about performance. Would
placing the BE on SharePoint improve performance (speed)?

In most experience moving the backend data to sharepoint or even SQL
server will not fix performance problems. MS access is no slower than the
vb.net when using SQL server as the backend database.

All of the advantages of the many features and functions in the Access
app are totally diminished by its 'slowness' on our network. I'm
searching for ways to improve the performance

As I stated moving the backend data to SQL server will usually slow it
down even more. It is only when you modify your design to take advantage
of SQL server who will you see an increase in performance. 9 out of 10
times the issues of performance is due for the follwing reasons:

1) something in the network is not set up correctly or the network is
simply slow.

2) something in the configuration setup of MS access is not correct and
that's making things slow

3) the design of the architecture the application is dragging too much
information over the network.

such as having IT move all of the other folders/files one level down from
our app so that it stands alone on the directory it's located.

Did the above move help at all? If the above made no difference, then the
above was not a issue for you. In other words this deeper directory issue
does not always affect performance on some networks. So, this issue made
have done nothing to help you, but at least it good to resolve one issue
out of a long list of issues.


Yes, all of the updates, solid connections, patches, etc. are preformed
by IT nightly thru their Radaii system. All of our queried fields are
indexed. The auto name correct (or whatever it is called) is turned off
as well as in the subforms.

The first number one issue on this list of network things to check is to
enusre ensure that you have a persistent connection. I think this advice
is given here once every other day in these newsgroups. for some of my
clients this does not make a difference, for others it increases
performance by five times or more. so I assumed that you create an mde,
and this front and NT is a place on each computer. I assume that in your
startup code you open a connection to the database (back end) and keep
this connection open at all times.


I'm trying to convince IT to give (purchase) us our own server so that
nothing else is on it but our app as this may speed queries, opening
forms, and printing significantly..

I doubing the above would help unless there is a significant amount a
users and network traffic and workload on that server you have now.


Thus I was intrigued by this discussion here on the SharePoint
possibility as our department has recently been introduced and given an
IT -sponsored/supported SharePoint portal. Maybe this is the answer.

An insights and thoughts here are appreciated....

There's no question that you can get a SQL server backend database, or
tables linked to share point to run in a lesser bandwidth environment.
However in many cases the advantages of this technology can only be had if
you're architecture (desing of your application) takes advantage of a
limited bandwidth.

I going to repeat this again:
Moving your back end database to a super duper high speed corporate
cluster of 10 SQL servers capable handling a thousand uses at once without
breaking into a sweat will NOT improve the performance of the application
if you've not designed it well as such a to reduce bandwidth requirements.
You can increase the performance that server as much as you want, the
problem is you're not changing your network nor are you changing the
bandwidth of your network. in most cases to take advantage of these new
technologies you have to have designs that are such that respect the
network you are on.

So, is SQL server or share point a possibility for you? Yes. will move
into share 0.0 SQL server solve your performance problems of magically
without effort on your part? NO.

You don't mention how many users and what is the max size of tables in
your application. Maybe it's possible that you've simply grown your
current network infrastructure and therefore you're suffering performance
problems. In other words let's say your application runs well if two
users, but when you run twenty users it runs too slow.

So after how many users does your application start slow down? At what
point are you finding your network and your application running too slow?


--
Albert D. Kallal (Access MVP)
Edmonton, Alberta Canada
pleaseNOOSpamKallal@xxxxxxx







.

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