Does anyone know, is there a limit to the size that a query in Access 97 can be? It's been years since I've looked at Access at all.

I've been asked by a client to look at an Access 97 db which is used as an interface between 2 systems.

The db is a goliath of a system that has been built up over many years and although doesn't handle a massive amount of data at anyone time or stores it (data comes in reformated,validated and reported on and then goes out again), they are starting to have some memory issues with it.

Firstly, the data and database never exceed 2GB and the tables don't exceed 1GB although you may have over 100,000 records in a table so I'm pretty sure it's not here. One of the queries which does validation is stupidly large (about 4 A4 pages if you extract the sql and put it into word at 8pt!!)

The client isn't acceptable to a) upgrading this db to say Access 2000 at least, b) having a purge of redundant code, c)doing this work in the destination db which is on Oracle and already has the facilities.

Cheers

Can you compact and repair the database? Try a test copy first. That my bring the speed back if it had been working before.

Are you saying that the database size might be an issue? that could be true. Access 97 maxes out at 2GB, I think.

Can you rewrite the query?

mmcdonal

Look it up at: http://wrox.books24x7.com

Access 97 does max out at 2GB, but this database never gets that far not even when processing the main macro they have set up. It already compacts on close automatically. I would like to re-write the query but before I can do that I do need to give them a proper business reason why. If the query is already too large for Access to handle (as mentioned 4 A4 pages of SQL) then the additional validation they need me to add will kill it but i need to confirm this.