I have a web site (several, actually) that are run from a SQL2K instance provided by my hosts. (Yes, they plan to upgrade to 08 soon, but that's not the issue for now.)
As I started waaaay back when as an Access developer, I have traditionally used Access as my development interface for these wonderful databases.
Unfortunately, since upgrading to Access 07, I have been experiencing INCREDIBLE lag times when communicating with my remote SQL instances. Just switching from field to field can take 30 seconds or longer. ANY cursor activity is accompanied by huge lag spikes.
There's no traffic moving on the network during these spikes, and there is no commensurate spike on CPU/Memory use on my site.
My dev box is more than beefy enough to handle the work.
While this was an issue on a decent connection, on dialup it was HORRIBLE and it's actually even *worse* on satellite broadband. This leads me to believe that Access is sending a whooole bunch of little tiny requests to the SQL server, and the 1/2second satellite lag is getting compounded, perhaps several dozen times, every time I try to do something.
For data entry and editing, this isn't a huge deal as I can just write ASP pages to handle it. However, for actual development it absolutely SUCKS. I mean it's so bad that sometimes I can't even *close* Access normally because by the time it's stopped being frozen from one event, it's frozen on the next.
OBVIOUSLY, MY APPROACH IS FLAWED.
Now the question is: How do I fix it? Right now I'm connecting directly to the server from an ADP file using a URI (mssql.[myhost].com). I notice that I get better response times when I access the SQL tables from inside a standard Access file using a local file DSN...problem is, I can't create or edit structures (tables, queries, etc) this way.
It's clear that I'm suffering from acute cranio-rectal insertion disorder here; the question is, where am I blowing it?
Any help appreciated.
-jh
(Apologies for the multi-post...it took over 30 minutes for the first one to show up, I couldn't subscribe to it because the system kept telling me it wasn't there, so I tried posting it again. I like to think I'm not an idiot, but apparently I'm wrong. Sorry. -jh)