OLE-DB dsnless- better than ODBC?

[Kendo]

Microsoft and Macromedia both agree that Access is not a particularly good database to use for web applications...especially for high-use sites. They also both agree that if you're forced to use Access (like most of us are), OLE-DB is at least better to use than ODBC with Access databases.

My question is this:

My website hosting company won't setup an OLE-DB datasource for me...but they will accept dsnless OLE-DB connections. I know how to do this, I've done it before.

BUT, is it worth it?

The site I'm developing is likely to get a decent number of visitors/day, and a lot of database transactions.

Is it worth creating dsnless OLE-DB connections, or shall I just stick with ODBC?

Thanks!

 

[SidianConsulting]

I have never found OLE-DB to be faster in my tests, whether using Access or SQL Server. Check out reply about ODBC connections and hold locks on Access databases here:

thread232-302975

I'd stick with ODBC myself; no one I know of has ever produced benchmarks that have proven OLE-DB is faster than ODBC. If someone has a link to something like this, I'd love to take a look at it! I don't want to hear it's faster but see no results; if any of you read ColdFusion Developer's Journal, there was an article by Randy Adkins on how to set up OLE-DB and how it was better and faster, but his "NDA" prevented him from disclosing the results. The real reason was because it was all BS and a huge pain to even set it up. This was for CF 4.x, so it might be easier now. Heck, maybe I should benchmark OLE-DB vs. ODBC on CF 5.0 and CFMX!

 

[Kendo]

Sorry to have perhaps given you the wrong impression.

From my reading I've found that OLE-DB is not a faster way of conncting to an Access database, but it is more a debate of connectivity and scalability.

Macromedia's article suggests exactly this...

http://www.macromedia.com/v1/handlers/index.cfm?ID=1540&Method=Full

However, I'm wondering if anyone has any advice as to whether this 'extra scalability' means anything in a shared server environment?

Thanks for your reply, Teknology, the link you provided was very interesting.

 

[SidianConsulting]

I remember reading that article a while ago. It's an old article, and many things have changed since then, one being MDAC which is up to (I think) version 2.7. If you get OLE-DB working with Access, I'd be interested to hear what kind of performance you get versus ODBC.

Good luck!

-Tek