To control how Microsoft Jet behaves in a multiuser environment, you can use a variety of Windows Registry settings. You can change these settings using the Registry Editor (Regedit.exe for Windows 95 and Windows NT Workstation 4.0, or Regedt32.exe for Windows NT Workstation 3.51). The settings in the registry affect the additional settings that Microsoft Access provides (described in the following note.)
Microsoft Access Users In Microsoft Access, you can set a number of options that control how Microsoft Access interacts with Microsoft Jet in a multiuser environment. The following settings are available, either on the Advanced tab of the Options dialog box (Tools menu), or programmatically through the SetOption method of the Application object.
Default Open Mode specifies how the database is to be opened if no explicit options are specified. (You can specify explicit options when you open the database directly or use the DAO OpenDatabase method.) If the database is to be used in a multiuser environment, set this option to Shared.
Default Record Locking specifies how records are to be locked when they are edited within the context of a Microsoft Access form. The three settings correspond to locking modes that Microsoft Jet defines. No Locks corresponds to optimistic locking, Edited Record corresponds to pessimistic locking, and All Records corresponds to recordset locking.
Number of Update Retries specifies how many times Microsoft Access retries saving a locked page.
Update Retry Interval specifies the number of milliseconds Microsoft Access waits before trying again to save a locked page.
ODBC Refresh Interval specifies how often (in seconds) Microsoft Access refreshes a form with data changes from ODBC data sources.
Refresh Interval specifies how often (in seconds) Microsoft Access refreshes a form with data changes from native Microsoft Jet data sources. It should be noted that this setting performs the same function as the PageTimeout setting for Microsoft Jet in the registry. In Microsoft Access, both the Refresh Interval and the PageTimeout settings are in effect at the same time.
If you have applications other than Microsoft Access that use Microsoft Jet for database access, you may want to modify engine settings by directly updating the registry. The advantage of this approach is that you’re making settings directly to Microsoft Jet. These settings are then used by all applications that use the engine. For the most flexibility, and to avoid any impact on other applications using Microsoft Jet 3.5, you can temporarily modify Microsoft Jet engine settings in Visual Basic code using the SetOption method of the DBEngine object. You can also use this method with Microsoft Access applications to tune Microsoft Jet registry settings.
See Also For more information about registry settings, see Appendix C, “Registry Settings.” For more information about modifying Microsoft Jet engine settings, see Chapter 13, “Optimizing Performance.”