Microsoft KB Archive/222135

= ACC97: Using Microsoft Jet with IIS =

Article ID: 222135

Article Last Modified on 1/24/2007

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APPLIES TO


 * Microsoft Access 97 Standard Edition
 * Microsoft Internet Information Server 3.0
 * Microsoft Internet Information Server 4.0
 * Microsoft Internet Information Services 5.0

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This article was previously published under Q222135



Advanced: Requires expert coding, interoperability, and multiuser skills.



SUMMARY
When you need unlimited users, 24x7 support, and ACID transactions, Microsoft strongly recommends that you use Microsoft SQL Server with Internet Information Server (IIS). Although Active Server Pages (ASP) works with any OLEDB and ODBC-compliant database, IIS has been extensively tested and is designed to work with Microsoft SQL Server when doing high transaction traffic and unlimited users that can occur in an Internet scenario.

NOTE: "ACID" is an acronym for the four properties of transaction-processing systems: Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability.

ASP also supports using the Microsoft Jet database engine as a valid data source. The Access ODBC Driver and Microsoft OLE DB Provider for Microsoft Jet are not intended to be used with high-stress, high-concurrency, 24x7 server applications, such as web, commerce, transactional, messaging servers, and so on.

When running Microsoft Jet in an IIS environment, it is recommended that you use the native Jet OLE DB Provider in place of the Microsoft Access ODBC driver. The Microsoft Access ODBC driver (Jet ODBC driver) can have stability issues due to the version of Visual Basic for Applications that is invoked because the version is not thread safe. As a result, when multiple concurrent users make requests of a Microsoft Access database, unpredictable results may occur. The native Jet OLE DB Provider includes fixes and enhancements for stability, performance, and thread pooling (including calling a thread-safe version of Visual Basic for Applications).

Both the ODBC driver and OLE DB Provider provide a wrapper around the Microsoft Jet database engine, which provides the core functionality of both the Access ODBC driver and Jet OLE DB Provider. While Microsoft Jet is consciously (and continually) updated with many quality, functional, and performance improvements, it was not intended (or architected) for the high-stress performance required by 24x7 scenarios, ACID transactions, or unlimited users, that is, scenarios where there has to be absolute data integrity or very high concurrency. Microsoft has performed very robust Multi-User/Stress scenarios that are designed to verify functionality in the appropriate usage space of Microsoft Jet, and addresses any issues that may be revealed.



MORE INFORMATION
The latest OLE DB provider for Microsoft Jet can be obtained from the following sources.  172733 Updated Version of Microsoft Jet 3.5 Available for Download The latest version of the Microsoft Data Access Components (MDAC) and the MDAC Software Devolpers Kit (SDK) is available at the following Microsoft Web site:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/dataaccess



The OLE DB provider for Microsoft Jet is included in the following products:


 * Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 Enterprise
 * Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0 Enterprise
 * Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0 Enterprise

