Forum Discussion
Steps to remove certain date range of records in Access
Can you quantify "slowly"? Seconds? Dozens of seconds?
What operations, specifically, are slow? Simply opening the accdb and waiting for the first form to settle?
What is the design pattern for opening forms? I.e. are forms bound to unfiltered queries, or even whole tables?
What database engine is used for the back end, accdb? SharePoint lists? SQL Server? Something else?
It's not uncommon for certain design patterns that work okay initially, on small recordsets, to be become increasingly sluggish as the number of records grows. Unfortunate design choices begin to make their impact known over time.
Trust me, I am well aware of that problem. This isn't on the same development platform, but I recently found myself relearning this important principle, even though I've been doing database work for more than 20 years.
The more details you can share about the design of the database application, the more likely someone will have direct suggestions to share. At the end of the process, you may still want to archive older data, but that should be a last resort.
- The database was created many years ago by a former team member who really did not know a lot about relationships or design choices. I could rebuild it, but time is not something I have to do so.
The database takes about 20 seconds to open and land on the Menu. When I click on Relationships Design I see 3 tables, one looks blank because it is link to an Excel spreadsheet for its data.
This database allows our Phone QA person to enter scores when observing phone calls for our Customer Service teams. I believe there are too many tables, queries, reports, etc. that does not mean much, little or improper relationship. She should enter call score data, ensure calculation is returned correctly (this took weeks for me to figure out when scores weren't correctly being outputted).
I consider myself a Novice still after all these years. I need to learn how to create formulas and maybe slowing recreate this tool for her.
Thank you for your insight.Okay, thanks.
20 seconds is SLLOOOOOWWWW. Time to refactor/redesign.
Archiving might be an interim, delaying tactic to put that off while you work on redesign.
My first target would be that linked Excel spreadsheet. Probably that is not the most efficient part of the application. How many records in it? How is it created? How is it used? Can it be replaced by an Access table by importing the data from it?
When you open the relationships window, try clicking on "All Relationships". Does that show any additional tables beyond the first three you see?
Can you manually add the other tables? Then take a screenshot for us. That might help in offering ideas on ways to improve it. Might not, but it could help a lot.
- When you work with Relationships window, also have Navigation Pane open, and drag and drop additional tables that may not show up at first (because they are not related to any others).
A good relationships window should look like this one for Northwind template:
https://support.content.office.net/en-us/media/559a04f2-11b2-44b8-ae4a-92284d1576bd.png