Analyzing an Application
As has been mentioned in several places in this book, the way you design your application can have a significant effect on its performance. Access has a Performance Analyzer that can help you pinpoint design problems that can result in inferior performance and, in some cases, automatically correct those problems.
To run the Performance Analyzer, open an Access application and then choose Tools, move the pointer onto Analyze, and choose Performance to display a dialog box such as the one shown in Figure 7.
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Figure 7 Use the Performance Analyzer to specify which components of the application you want to analyze.
If you elect to analyze tables, select the Tables tab to display a list of tables. Select one or more tables, and then choose OK. Depending on the complexity of your tables, the analyzer might take several seconds to analyze those tables and then display either a message box or a dialog box. If you've done a good job of table design, you usually see a message box that says, "The Performance Analyzer has no suggestions to improve the objects you selected." Otherwise, you see a dialog box such as the one in Figure 8. Although it's helpful, the Performance Analyzer isn't perfect. Look at its suggestions carefully and decide for yourself whether you should follow them.
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Figure 8 The Performance Analyzer lists the analysis results.
Notice that each of the analysis results is identified by an icon as Recommendation, Suggestion, Idea, or Fixed. You can select any item in the Analysis Results list to see detailed information in the Analysis Notes box below the list.
After you choose a result marked by a Recommendation or Suggestion icon, you can let Access make the optimization for you by choosing Optimize. After you do that, the result is marked with the Fixed icon. You have to follow any results marked with the Idea icon by yourself.
Choose Help in the Performance Analyzer window to display more information about using the analyzer. For additional information about improving the performance of your application, click the button near the bottom of the Help window to display the Help topic shown in Figure 9.
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Figure 9 Help offers the topics shown here that you can access to find suggestions about optimizing your application's performance.