upgrade access 2003? [VB.NET 2008 + Access 2003]

Question

I have programs (created using VB.NET 2008) interacting with .mdb files (created in access 2003). use Oledb 4.0.

Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source=MyPath;
Jet OLEDB:Database Password=MyDbPassword;

Works fine on all my computers: W8 Pro, XP, 2003, Vista, Windows 7, ....(32 and 64 bits).

But with the upcoming end of support and updates for office 2003, should it also be necessary to migrate our databases .mdb (created with access 2003) to a higher version? affects or this is not necessary if we do not use Office 2003?

Answer 1

No you don't need to upgrade your app to a newer version of Jet (and no, there is no new version of Jet), you could still use that bits until they are supported by the Net Framework OleDb classes and the libraries present on the target machine.
The version of Office installed by your user has nothing to do with that.

Of course this library is outdated. The new bits for opening a Microsoft Access database in the new format (ACCDB) are called Microsoft.ACE.OleDb.12.0 and you can find the connection strings on this site

These new libraries allows to write application for 64bit but I can't really recommend to switch to a 64 app unless you have compelling reason to do that. For more info see this question

Answer 2

Updates for Office are only for Office. I doubt that there's been an update to Jet 4.0 for some time.