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Is it possible to link one MDB to another in a standalone manner?

Ie. If I have the accounts table in db1.mdb and the products table in db2.mdb, can both these MDBs be coded so that they can link to each of the tables in a seamless manner?

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@Craig Have you proven your VB app does not crash when the MDB contains only a small subset of the data? –  HansUp May 8 '10 at 16:35
What is it you're trying to accomplish here? Accounts and Products belong in the same MDB file, especially if they are related (indeed, you can't set up engine-level referential integrity except for tables in the same MDB). –  David-W-Fenton May 9 '10 at 2:30
@David: I'm just using it as an example. I want to take a very large table out of one MDB and put it another in order to avoid problems associated with larger MDB files. –  CJ7 May 9 '10 at 5:25
@HansUp: No but Error 3343 is being reported: "Unrecognised database format 'xyz.mdb', which I think means the database is unreadable because either someone has broken it by trying to open it in a newer version of Access, or it is too big. I am preparing for the possibilily that it is too big. –  CJ7 May 9 '10 at 5:27
If your tables are too large for MDBs, then you've outgrown Jet/ACE and should switch to a database engine with larger capacity. –  David-W-Fenton May 9 '10 at 18:53
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Yes, just do it. You can create linked tables in MS Access, and the Jet engine does not care anymore in which MDB file the data resides.

In fact it is good practice to separate the data db from the code db, because you can send updated code dbs without the need to update the data db to your customers.

Btw. we stopped storing data in MDBs altogether, because they tend to break regulary. Better start using the Microsoft Desktop Database Engine immediatly, and just place the code in thr MDB.

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I have been working with mdbs for a number of years and they do not "break regularly" unless they are very badly set-up. –  Remou May 8 '10 at 12:46
I have worked with MDBs for about 6 years now, and they broke regulary. I have to admit, that the 20 users using the one backend concurrently on a remote windows host might have been too much. We switched to a real server based database now. –  Daniel May 8 '10 at 18:28
Access databases are prone to breakage when used across an unreliable network. In 5 years experience I encountered one which broke (corrupted) on two occasions. That one was a database opened directly from a network share by more than one user at a time. It never broke again after we split it and gave each user their own local copy of the front-end with links to the data in the networked back-end database. –  HansUp May 8 '10 at 21:11
@Daniel: the key part of your statement is "on a remote windows host." You can't use Jet/ACE except on a wired LAN with reasonable bandwidth. This is to be expected of a file-based database engine. –  David-W-Fenton May 9 '10 at 2:27
To second @Remou and @HansUp, I don't see "breakage" of MDBs/ACCDBs, and I've been at this since 1996. Sure, the occasional hiccup occurs, but only very, very seldom. Regular maintenance and proper backups insure no loss of data or any downtime for users. –  David-W-Fenton May 9 '10 at 2:28
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