Creating A Reprieve
Now that I’m done watching Idol and House, then surfing a bit, I thought I would follow up to this post in which the support person insisted we have to move to SQL Server this instant because MSDE is over the 2 GB limit and there’s no way to buy any time.
I ran the Verify and Shrink commands from the Management Console associated with the program and its database. For those familiar with Microsoft Access, it’s a bit like doing a repair and compact. I couldn’t remember their names, but I knew there was something like it - just not how well it would shrink things - so I had actually asked the support guy, who claimed there was nothing we could do.
Anyway, that brought the combined total of two data and two log files down to about 1.5 gigabytes, which is less than 2 gigabytes. Even if I have to do this regularly, it buys us time and we shouldn’t have to take expensive measures on the spur of the moment.
What I am waiting to see is if the database size resolves the problem. If not, they have to figure it out for real. The direction this had taken smacked of “can’t specifically solve it, so nuke it instead and chances are when the dust clears the problem will have too.” That can be a useful tactic. For instance, do you test every possible thing for 20 hours, or do you fdisk and reinstall when fdisk is virtually guaranteed to kill a problem? At the same time, it can be a way to get a customer you’re tired of off your agenda for a while, if not for good. If we aren’t all set tomorrow and it can’t be blamed on the database, or available physical memory,, the guy is going to hate me for making him have to keep figuring it out. Oh well.
I certainly beat their expectations. Buy a server and expensive software… Wait, nevermind!
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