Hi, I have a few questions about compact and repair. Many years ago I made a db for fuel mileage and it worked great for about a year and then errors starting showing up out of the blue which made it almost unusable. Now that I know more I believe it happened because it was never once compacted and repaired, I had no idea about that feature and how important it was.
Now I've made a fairly complex db and I have to make sure this doesn't happen to this one.
When I started this db I didn't know about compact and repair however when I first started in the options I set the compact and repair on close and I'm very happy at this point I did that so it was always cleaned up as I built. Now I know the importance and hope I didn't mess up which lead to my questions.
The db is split, I have 3 different front ends with no tables and 6 backend files with only tables. Some of the backend files are linked together and most are linked to each frontend.
- Do the frontends need compact and repair? They hold no data, just forms, reports and queries. I don't think its needed for frontends without tables but I want to be sure I have it right in my head. I'll leave the compact and repair on close turned on and the db is closed every night so I'm not worried about them.
- The backends are never opened on the server, do I need to manually open each backend and close it to compact and repair? This is what worries me.
- If so can it be automated? A button in the frontend that opens each backend file and closes it so the compact runs?
- Was it a good or bad idea to have 6 backend files? I think its pretty easy it make them all one if its better.
Thanks