10/17/2003 NT26 and ASP pages

[mresell]

MS is getting worse everyday, the mess they are tryin to pull w/ IE and outlook express is another example of integrating products in crazy ways tryin to get people to jump thru hoops at the expense of quality software. It is a terrible shame that they seem to not want to improve their products in meaningful ways. The biggest software co in the world can and should do better. Sorry to sound like an anti M$ rant I am not anti M$, just think they do not try or really care.

[antic]

Hi guys, I'm really sorry to see you having all these problems...

I don't know if this is a workable or practical suggestion, but what if all the Access-using sites are simply moved to Win2K machines, and only let plans that use SQL Server or MySQL databases onto the 2003 machines?

Considering it may take a long time (if ever) that there's a fix for this problem, would it be worth doing something like that..?

[Brangwyn]

I don't think thats really practical, theres no way to setup a plan that would "disallow" MS access. Even if you completely uninstalled JET people could still use ODBC for their access db with a DNSless connection etc.

Imho its something unique to that particular machine, I've got several 2k3 boxes running access and we've not had any issues like above, not to mention the probably thousands of companies who most likely are also already running ms access + w2k3.

Id be inclined to install a brand new machine with everything on it and then move the user data over to it, rename it NT26 and see how it goes myself.

[gadgetgal99]

Use the status screen link Brangqyn posted. Look for nt27.hsphere.cc. For detail click the link. Looks fine now

[tkraffty]

Good ol' Microsoft... Reminds me of a joke - if MS built cars, we'd have to rebuild the highways and streets every time they released a new model... To anyone else this makes no sense, but they must be smoking something really good up there in Redmond.

Thousands of web-applications are Access-based, and perhaps hundreds of thousands to millions of web sites are use this database. For most people, Access is way easier to configure and work with than SQL, people who are barely technical can still figure out the basics of Access-based components without the need to hire an expensive developer, Access is much easier for these types to backup (Ctrl-C, Ctrl-P), and the database can easily handle production site traffic of up to several thousand requests per day - which is more than most of the sites out there would ever need.

What's MS thinking??

[Brangwyn]

What's MS thinking??

$$$$ - their third quarter result was below expectations

[gadgetgal99]

Originally posted by tkraffty
What's MS thinking??

This is Microsoft you're talking about. They are thinking more money. I think they all are given little cassette players to place under their pillows that chant Profit, Profit, Profit, Make them Pay, Profit, Profit, Profit!

All those MSSQL licenses instead of no extra money on Access.

I saw somewhere that Microsoft had said they were not actually going to stop Outlook Express development. They said the statement saying they were was a mistake. The rep who said they would continue to develop Outlook Express probably ran out of batterites for his cassette player. God forbid that they would keep developing an a free email client now that they have quashed Netscape.

Now that my weekly Microsoft rant is over, I need to figure out who I will give my bucks to for my upgrade to office 2003 professional.

[jmbeach]

Originally posted by mresell
another example of integrating products in crazy ways tryin to get people to jump thru hoops at the expense of quality software. It is a terrible shame that they seem to not want to improve their products in meaningful ways. The biggest software co in the world can and should do better.

Funny, this statement reminds me of the movie "Revolution OS" - there was a passage in it that read a letter from Bill Gates back in the early days complaining about the free software movement, and how nobody could create good free software. Kinda puts in into perspective when their products are not always up to snuff, even when they cost a bundle! For those of you who haven't seen this movie, keep an eye out for it on the Sundance channel.

Maybe putting software vendors on the hook for crappy products will get their attention.

Sorry for the off subject remarks

[bigdave]

When we install NT28, I will try to make sure we just leave MS Jet with service pack 6 installed, this all happened when we jumped to service pack 7 then 8 to fix the problems in 7 which didn't work. So I would hope with NT28 if we stick to MS jet with sp6 we should be ok, I hope.

[antic]

Originally posted by Brangwyn
I don't think thats really practical, theres no way to setup a plan that would "disallow" MS access. Even if you completely uninstalled JET people could still use ODBC for their access db with a DNSless connection etc.

If the problem is only the use of ODBC (no-one I know has had this problem using OLEDB for Access) then perhaps the W2k3 machines should disallow ODBC, which HSphere lets you do. I routinely exclude ODBC from all my plans now - if anyone complains I'll just say it's old technology and tell em how to use OLEDB for Access instead.

Still.. my service account is on NT26, so I might delete it a re-create it - maybe it'll jump over to NT27 as my other new sites are doing?

[Brangwyn]

If its "JET" thats the problem though, then both JET ODBC and JET OLEDB are probably equally as broken as each other. The only difference really between them is one additional layer if using ODBC (the ODBC layer) both instances go through the ADO (OLEDB Consumer level anyway)

[admin]

The latest from MS.

Brad,

I wanted to follow-up our conversation about Jet and IIS. As we discussed, we do not recommend that Jet be used in a 24X7 environment such as IIS. It was never designed to be used in that manner and you will experience intermittent failure. Please see

"299973.KB.EN-US ACC2000: Using Microsoft Jet with IIS" found at: http://support.microsoft.com/default...B;EN-US;299973 for more information.

"258939.KB.EN-US Recommendations for Connecting to Databases through Internet Information" found at: http://support.microsoft.com/default...B;EN-US;258939

"306518.KB.EN-US INFO: Troubleshooting Guide for 80004005 Errors in Active Server Pages" found at: http://support.microsoft.com/default...B;EN-US;306518

Another item that we discussed was the usage of MSDE instead of Jet. Some items you may want to take a look at in regards to MSDE are listed below.

“Choosing between MSDE and Jet for your application” found at: http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;322703

“Where to Find Information About MSDE for Visual Studio” http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;251270

As we discussed we are working on several cases where the customer is seeing the same issue that you are and right now we have no confirmation that anything we have suggested has worked. The one suggestion that we have found some success with is to break out the Jet/ODBC ASP applications into their own application pool, JET/OLEDB applications into their own application pool, JET/ODBC application into their own pool and leave the rest of the ASP applications run in their own pool. This will allow us to minimize the impact of the crashes you are getting each down done to applications of the same architecture and help us identify what architecture is the root of the problem.

I will give you a call on Monday so we can further discuss this. I am going to get all of these cases rounded up and get them over to our escalation group for some assistance. Please let me know what questions you have and we will touch base on Monday.




---------------------------------


That was from friday, I just got them on the phone, they have anther tech calling me back with some ideas, but they still have no FIX at all for this..

[Brangwyn]

You'd have to actually work our which sites were using JET to change their pooling options, that could be a pain in the bum

[admin]

Ok here is the new things from MS...


We discussed the following items.

1) You are running in IIS 5.0 compatibility mode, would you be able to break out the applications causing the problem into their own process space?

Unfortunately if you are running IIS 6.0 in IIS 5.0 compatibility mode then you cannot use the new Worker Process Isolation Mode to reduce the crashing on your web server. I just confirmed this with our IIS group. So breaking these applications out is not going to be an option for you.

2) We talked about using the JET OLEDB Provider instead of the MS Access Driver to connect these ASP pages to an Access MDB file.

There are two ways that you can connect to Access from and ASP page. The MS Access ODBC Driver or the MS Jet 4.0 OLEDB Provider. If you are using the ODBC driver, you will see connection strings in the ASP pages that are similar to the following:

oConn.Open "Driver={Microsoft Access Driver (*.mdb)};Dbq=c:\somepath\mydb.mdb;Uid=admin;Pwd="

oConn.Open "DSN=mySystemDSN;Uid=myUsername;Pwd=myPassword "

If you are using the OLEDB Provider for Jet (Access) then you will see a connection string that is similar to the following:

oConn.Open "Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source=c:\somepath\myDb.mdb;User Id=admin;Password="



Again if you take a look at: "299973.KB.EN-US ACC2000: Using Microsoft Jet with IIS" found at: http://support.microsoft.com/default...B;EN-US;299973 This explains that we recommend that people use OLEDB with their ASP application if they need to connect to an Access database as this tends to be more stable.

3) You also asked why we would allow an option in FrontPage for customers to create Web Applications that connect to Access if we do not recommend this practice.

I talked with our FrontPage group and they suggested that the option to connect to Access was implemented in FrontPage so people could use Access in their development environment and then move to a more Enterprise Level database in production. The second reason was that FrontPage was more geared for the hobbyist web developers and not for the hard core web developers who expected 24X7 uptime. The hobbyist developers would find that Access would probably work fine for them since they would have minimal load on their applications.

Brad, we understand that the Internet Service Providers are being hit the hardest with this issue. We know that normally you do not monitor what people up load to your web server and you do not control what they can use. Therefore your customers build applications that are against our best practices and it is not realistic for you to go back to them and tell that that what they are doing will not work. Many times those customers do not have the experience to understand why their small application is breaking your web server. This is one of the main reasons that IIS 6.0 does have the Worker Process Isolation Mode feature. This was implemented to allow your web server to continue running even when someone’s bad code breaks.

We have development resources working this issue and I just spoke with my Tech Lead to get an update on this. He is working with a bootleg copy of a fix that may help with this issue. I will let you know how testing goes on that and we can determine where to go from here.

Please let me know what questions you have and I will keep you updated on the progress here.



-------------------------

These are the 3 ways MS showed me they can get to the Access DB one of them is using jet the other 2 do not seem to and would stop the issue.


oConn.Open "Driver={Microsoft Access Driver (*.mdb)};Dbq=c:\somepath\mydb.mdb;Uid=admin;Pwd="

oConn.Open "DSN=mySystemDSN;Uid=myUsername;Pwd=myPassword "

If you are using the OLEDB Provider for Jet (Access) then you will see a connection string that is similar to the following:

oConn.Open "Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source=c:\somepath\myDb.mdb;User Id=admin;Password="




I think if we can get every one to use this:
oConn.Open "Driver={Microsoft Access Driver (*.mdb)};Dbq=c:\somepath\mydb.mdb;Uid=admin;Pwd="

It should not use jet and should help with the issue..

[Brangwyn]

Catch 22 there, that driver as most developers will tell you is

a) Slow compared to JET OLEDB (in the range of 20%-30%)
b) Consdierably less robust. Almost all intermittent "weird" access problems I've ever come accross on a server was becuase they used this driver and getting them to change to JET OLEDB resolved the issue.

Perhaps its actually the database version and not JET, If people are still using access 97 databases instead of 2000 or 2002 I'd expect some problems personally. Only MS could really test that easily though as they'd have the resources available to them I presume.