Access™ 2007 VBA Programmer's Reference

19.2. Choosing the Correct File Format

Many misconceptions exist regarding the differences between the Access Project (ADP) file format and the various Access database (ACCDB and MDB) file formats. Even before ADP files were available (introduced in Access 2000), many developers did not fully understand how MDB files worked or how to optimize their usage in a client-server environment. Although even serious design mistakes can still provide acceptable performance when there is not a large amount of data in the database, as the data grows, the inefficient design becomes more and more detrimental to the application's performance and reliability.

Microsoft Office Access 2007 features a brand new database engine: the Access Connectivity Engine (ACE)—also called the Access database engine. If you've used previous versions of Access, you are probably very familiar with ACE's predecessor, the Jet database engine. ACE is a privatized version of the Jet database engine with a number of feature enhancements. Using ACE, Access 2007 supports creating the following file formats: ACCDB (Access 2007 file format), MDB (Access 2000 and 2002-2003 file formats), ADP (Access Data Project), MDE (Access Complied MDB database), ACCDE (Access Complied ACCDB database), MDA (Access MDB Add-in), ACCDA (Access ACCDB Add-in), and ACCDC (Access Signed CAB file). This section discusses some of the differences between the ACCDB/MDB and ADP file formats.

19.2.1. What Are ACCDB and MDB Files?

Since its inception ...