I have a good old Delphi VCL App connecting to EDB at a number of factory locations. It is up-to-date (Delphi 10.4.1, current EDB version).

I have installed the EDB ODBC driver at a small number of sites, and trained local staff to write SELECT statements to retrieve read-only data into Excel Spreadsheets. No data updates are done via Excel. It is strictly read-only.

At one of the sites staff have really taken to this and are creating lots of spreadsheets accessing the DB with good numbers of staff using them.

This site is now reporting some issues with database access (errors relating to inability to open connections, very slow responses etc.)

I want to allow Excel connectivity. Do I just need to review the SQL staff are writing and optimize it, or are there other things I can do to improve performance as well as this. I have not made any changes to EDBs default ODBC settings, or any special settings within Excel.

Adam,

<< This site is now reporting some issues with database access (errors relating to inability to open connections, very slow responses etc.)

I want to allow Excel connectivity. Do I just need to review the SQL staff are writing and optimize it, or are there other things I can do to improve performance as well as this. I have not made any changes to EDBs default ODBC settings, or any special settings within Excel. >>

Yeah, if they're writing SQL queries that don't properly use indexes, etc., then they can literally bring the whole system to its knees by sharing one really bad query with other employees and having several execute it at the same time.  The biggest problem is going to be queries that cause a lot of record scans and/or use joins that aren't able to use indexes.

Tim Young
Elevate Software
www.elevatesoft.com