Death of Jet Databases?

[dilettante]

I hate "cross-posting" as a rule, but I dropped this item over in the "Access other topics" forum and it made nary a splash. There's been no response at all so far and it's about 5 pages in to the forum now since the weekend.

I figure maybe 99% of the ASP sites ever built (more?) use Access databases, and get to them via the Jet OLEDB Provider via ADO. Ok, maybe that's high, maybe not. But I thought there might be some interest in this forum.

I was hunting for a stand-alone help file for the JRO API when I came across this tidbit:

Jet and Replication Objects (JRO)

The Microsoft Jet OLE DB Provider and other related components were removed from MDAC 2.6. Microsoft has deprecated the Microsoft Jet Engine, and plans no new releases or service packs for this component. As a result, the Jet and Replication Objects (JRO) is being deprecated in this release and will not be available in any future MDAC releases.

Now, MDAC 2.6 is fairly recent and I know 2.7 has been out for awhile too, but my question is "whither Jet?"

I see this announcement as having several possible meanings:
[ul][li]Jet databases are going away entirely. Future versions of Access will use MSDE exclusively. Get used to it.
[li]Access will still use Jet, but there will no longer be an OLE DB Provider to access these databases outside of Access.
[li]Access will use Jet, but there won't be OLE DB or ODBC access (no ADO access at all) to these databases outside of Access.[/ul]
Yeouch.

This looks bad, very bad for me. I do tons of this and am even in the process of developing a new product that is very dependent on this facility. For my product Jet databases are ideal because I specifically want a desktop and/or file-share based database, not a server-based true client/server database.

It's almost like MS heard what I was up to, and did this just to put me out of business. Nah, that's just paranoid. ;-)

If we lose the Jet OLE DB Provider we also lose ADO access to Fox, xBase, and other "lower-end" database types too, don't we?

Anybody heard anything more solid about the future of MDB files? Is there a new Provider coming out or is Jet going away?

Oh (retch, gag) I just had an awful thought: are they going to keep Jet as a database engine, but make us use some XML access method or something? You know how drunk MS is on the whole XML sideshow these days.

Inquiring minds are desperate for feedback here.

So the question is, is Access (Jet) going away soon? If Access remains part of the next Office suite, will it become a front-end to MSDE?

How will your ASP sites be impacted if Jet (that is, the old Access database engine you connect to with ADO) goes away?

And has anybody heard anything else on this?

 

[Tarwn]

Well, it won't be the first component that MS stops providing with releases. Quite a few people have already felt the impact of the lack of CDONTS object in Windows XP To Clarify, CDONTS is the most common mail component on the planet for ASP, why? MS bundled it in with Windows NT then bundled it in with 2000 to "make pages developed on Windows NT compatible on Windows 2000".
This object was left off XP, poor souls who upgraded to XP and suddenly had to rewrite all their mail components.

I think from Microsofts point of view, if there are that many users out there using the Jet drivers, it can be a good move to generate money, but a bad move for popularity. A lot of the not so dead-set MS people will move to other databases, because if they have to rewrite, might as well rewrite to someone who isn't going to change things out from under you.

Just my

-Tarwn --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---

http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

 

[dilettante]

I was wondering if they were trying to push people onto MSDE. Maybe they don't want to support Jet anymore, maybe there are issues with Jet's internal security system vs. NT security - single-signon for one.

I guess its hard to say. Hmm, does MSDE run on a 9x system? If not, maybe it is seen as another way to move people off DOS and onto NT. If newer Office releases require NT (Win2K, WinXP, Longhorn, whatever) it'll sure help move the corporate world off 9x.

But mostly, I wondered if it were true (sure seems that way from the MDAC 2.6 docs) and if so, what the remaining lifetime for Jet DBs might be? They had a web page showing "life cycle" charts for the OSs, I wonder if they have something similar for products like Access?

I haven't had to convert a web site using CDONTS to CDO. Is it really nasty, or just a huge pain?

 

[Tarwn]

Judging by the complete lack of examples I could find (well very few examples that is) doing it, I would assume most people move to third party objects that won't require subsequent updates (although the move away from COM may cause this anyway)
-Tarwn --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---

http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

 

[basil3legs]

The site I support uses Access databases throuhg the Jet driver. A while back the database was Access 97 as we use Office 97 across the company when suddenly, without warning the site stopped working. Our Web Space Host had kindly updated the web server to only support Access 2000 databases without telling us or our supplier. Having found out what was causing the problems, I had to go home (as this was the only place I had access to Access 2000), download the database, convert it to Access 2000 and then upload it again. This was inconvenient to say the least but now means if I need to make any changes to the database or download it and view it at all at work, I can't without writing an ASP page to do each change (and I no longer have Office 2000 loaded at home - just to make it more awkward!)

This no doubt was down to Microsoft removing backward compatibility just to try and rake in more money!

 

[dilettante]

I think that JRO can do the conversion for you, at least as far as the data itself goes. You don't need Access 2000 to do this.

Forms and queries might be another matter.

There is also a downloadable utility to accomplish this at

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;en-us;q295334

It asn't billed as a "Database upgrade" tool, it's a compact & repair thingy, but I think it'll do the type of conversion you want without even writing a few lines of script to invoke JRO yourself.

 

[dilettante]

You Access guys are kinda funny sometimes. Sorry, I don't "live" in Access but am coming to appreciate it more and more.

If you think MS is giving you a hard time you oughta see what Oracle developers go through when new releases come out though. MS is a benificent god compared to Oracle. In many places Oracle doesn't even offer a lot of "upward" compatability, let alone downward, backward, or sideways.

;-)