How does one decompile and recompile a database application?

Question

I have an Access database application and I would like to know the proper way of decompiling and recompiling it.

Answer 1

@Tim Lentine's practical instructions are good, but he leaves out the actual steps required for a decompile to be worth doing:

1. backup your database.

2. compact your database.

3. using the shortcut created with Tim's instructions, open your database.

4. close that instance of Access.

5. open a new instance of Access and open the database you just decompiled, but BE SURE YOU BYPASS ALL STARTUP CODE (i.e., hold down the shift key). If you don't do that, then you might as well go back to step 3 and try again, since if the startup code runs, your code will recompile before you are ready to do so.

6. compact the decompiled database (and be sure you hold down the shift key so that it bypasses the startup code; see #5).

7. open the VBE and on the Debug menu, choose COMPILE [name of project].

8. on the file menu, save the project.

9. compact again.

Why are all these steps necessary?

Because you want to not just decompile the VBA, you want to make sure that all the data pages where the compiled p-code was stored are completely discarded before you recompile.

I also recommend:

1. in VBE options, turn off COMPILE ON DEMAND

2. in the VBE, add the COMPILE button to your toolbar.

3. compile often with that button on the toolbar, after every two or three lines of code.

Decompile is not something you should use all the time, but during heavy-duty coding, I might do a decompile a couple of times a day. And I generally decompile/recompile as the last step before releasing an app into production use.

Last of all, read Michael Kaplan's article on the subject to understand it better.