Is the maximum number of Access processes restriced to 20?

[Clive]

Hi,

We have an application running on our windows terminal servers which has
been developed in Access and compile to an ade file. We have Office 2003
Proffesional installed on these servers and we run the .ade file with the
/runtime switch e.g. msaccess /runtime project.ade (The backend database to
this application is MS SQL Server 2000)

Everything works just fine until the 21st user tries to start the program.
The get the following error message: The file is not in the correct format.

I have asked this question in the WTS newsgroup but they say that this has
nothing to do with the operating system so I was hopeing that someone could
tell me if this is a known restriction / problem with access or if there is
something we can do with it.

This is quite a big problem for us as this is one of the main applications
that our customer uses and it means that our terminal servers are restricted
also to 20 users even though they can handle a much larger load, which means
we have to buy in more servers.

Many Thanks

Clive

 

[John Spencer]

Have you checked the number of processes/ concurrent connections allowed on
the MS SQL Server? The SQL server may have the number of concurrent
connections allowed set to 20 (or something other than zero which is
unlimited).

 

[Clive]

Yes Sql server is set to 0 which is unlimited.

Have you checked the number of processes/ concurrent connections allowed on
the MS SQL Server? The SQL server may have the number of concurrent
connections allowed set to 20 (or something other than zero which is
unlimited).

 

[John Spencer]

Ok, I wish I had something further to add, but I don't.
Anyone else have an idea??

 

[Tony Toews]

Hi,

We have an application running on our windows terminal servers which has
been developed in Access and compile to an ade file. We have Office 2003
Proffesional installed on these servers and we run the .ade file with the
/runtime switch e.g. msaccess /runtime project.ade (The backend database to
this application is MS SQL Server 2000)

Everything works just fine until the 21st user tries to start the program.
The get the following error message: The file is not in the correct format.

Now this error message makes no sense at all. If there was a problem
with 21 connections I would expect to see a different message.

Just curious. How do you know the problem is on exactly the 21st
user?

Does each user have their own copy of the FE ADE? Maybe the problems
is 20 connections on the same ADE? If so

I specifically created the Auto FE Updater utility so that I could
make changes to the FE MDE as often as I wanted and be quite confident
that the next time someone went to run the app that it would pull in
the latest version. For more info on the errors or the Auto FE
Updater utility see the free Auto FE Updater utility at
http://www.granite.ab.ca/access/autofe.htm at my website to keep the
FE on each PC up to date.

In a Terminal Server or Citrix environment the Auto FE Updater now
supports creating a directory named after the user on a server. Given
a choice put the FE on the Citrix server to reduce network traffic and
to avoid having to load objects over the network which can be somewhat
sluggish.

Tony
--
Tony Toews, Microsoft Access MVP
Please respond only in the newsgroups so that others can
read the entire thread of messages.
Microsoft Access Links, Hints, Tips & Accounting Systems at
http://www.granite.ab.ca/accsmstr.htm

 

[Clive]

We monitor the number of msaccess processes that are running on the servers
so that when a user rings in with this problem we can see that they are
trying to start the 21st process. We have also recreated this serveral times
ourselves.

There is only one ADE file.
It is possible that the limit is with the ADE file which is why I was
hopeing that someone from Microsoft could answer the question as it should be
fairly easy for them to answer since there is either a restriction or there
is not. If there is no restriction then we can get the devloper to see if
there is some sort of restriction with his code.