Forum Discussion

Anonymous's avatar
Anonymous
Not applicable
5 years ago

Problem with connecting to a folder with MS Access databases

 

Hi,

 

I'm trying to use a connection to a folder to have access to several databases of MS Access. Often when I'm refreshing the data occours a error because of thr .ldb file that is created when Power BI opens one of the databases.

 

Does anyone has a suggestion to avoid this? How can I put Access creating '.ldb files in some other folder?

3 Replies

  • Anonymous's avatar
    Anonymous
    Not applicable

    Hi Anonymous ,

     

    Problem
    For every database opened for shared use, an .ldb file is created to store computer and security names and to place extended byte range locks. The .ldb file always has the same name and is located in the same folder as the opened database (.mdb).

     

    Resolving The Problem
    For every database opened for shared use, an .ldb file is created to store computer and security names and to place extended byte range locks. The .ldb file always has the same name and is located in the same folder as the opened database (.mdb). For example, if you open (for shared use) any of the TDS.mdb Project databases in, then a file called TDS.ldb is automatically created in the same folder. For each person who opens a shared database, the Jet database engine writes an entry in the database's .ldb file. The size of each .ldb entry is 64 bytes. The first 32 bytes contain the computer name. The second 32 bytes contain the security name. The maximum number of concurrent users that the Jet database engine supports is 255; therefore, the .ldb file size is never larger than 16 kilobytes.

     

    Reference: The .ldb file content and why the .ldb file being created by Microsoft Access Jet database engine.

     

     

    Best Regards,

    Stephen Tao

     

    If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

    • Anonymous's avatar
      Anonymous
      Not applicable

      Hei Stephen,

       

      Thaks for your answer! I understand the reason of the use of .ldb files. My question is about how can Power BI avoid then.

       

      I need to analyse a serie of .mdb files that has the same structure of tables. Merging the files or converting the tables to Excel is very time consuming. Power BI works fine with few .mdb files and if there is no deep transformation of the tables. Once the analyse in Power BI starts to be deep, it starts to get failure in refreshing because it tries to read the .ldb that is created in the same folder. 

       

      My interpretation is that Power BI updates its values in multithread and opens several databases at the same time. That is why it finds in the folder the .ldb that is created for opening another one.

       

      Do you know any solution? 

  • Anonymous's avatar
    Anonymous
    Not applicable

    Does anyone has a solution for this?