Understanding a Access DB

  • Hello Folks i have a Access DB of size 2 GB.

    with around 100 tables and 100 queries. It has a lot of forms, macros etc too

    But sadly it has no documentation

    Sadder part is that there is no ER diagram too..

    I used Visio to reverse reverse Engineer.. But what all i got was a digram with all tables.

    How do i figure out Relationships, Entities ? etc

    Please help

    [font="Verdana"]
    Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday:-)
    [/font]

  • I don't know of any built-in functionality, but you might want to look at Access Analyzer from FMS (http://www.fmsinc.com). I used this in the past and I thought that it worked well.

  • If you look in Access and veiw relationships you will find that you can veiw all relationships. The relationships display in a diagram veiw in access.

    Dan

    If only I could snap my figures and have all the correct indexes apear and the buffer clean and.... Start day dream here.

  • In MS Access 2003 there is Tools > Analyze > Documenter which will display the properties of the MS Access objects. You can select the objects and properties you wish to document.

  • Some other resources: http://www.accessmvp.com/DJSteele/Documentor.html (free) and http://www.aadconsulting.com/ezdocprm.html (not free) ...good luck

  • First of all, 2 GB is the theoretical design limit for an Access mdb, so you should make a copy before you do anything else. Then in the copy, try running a compact & repair database, that might shrink it to a more manageable size.

    If there are no relationships defined, you will need to inspect each query to determine the relationships & then create them in the View Relationships window.

    If there are 100 tables and only 100 queries, chances are that some of the forms or reports might have embedded sql in the data source and/or combos or list boxes, so you need to look in those too.

    Here are three sets of code that might be helpful

    this creates two tables - one that lists all tables & field names, types, sizes; the other lists all queries & source tables, field names, types, sizes:

    http://www.wvmitchell.com/tips/Database%20-%20documenting%20tables%20and%20queries.htm

    this creates a table of all forms with the data sources:

    http://www.wvmitchell.com/tips/GetDataSources_Forms.htm

    this creates a table of all reports with the data sources:

    http://www.wvmitchell.com/tips/GetDataSources_Reports.htm

Viewing 6 posts - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

You must be logged in to reply to this topic. Login to reply