Jet MDB corruption is rare except when the MDB file is shared among several client PCs. In such cases any of them might fail or lose network connectivity while holding dirty pages resulting in database corruption.

Using a non-shared MDB on a local hard drive should be quite stable. Of course a catastrophe can always occur but that's why we back things up. Such catastrophes usually damage more important files as well (like parts of Windows).

If you are using a database as a local datastore for some application you never need to use transactions anyway. They only become important when you have multiple updaters.


You can actually improve Jet's performance when used only by a single updater by opening the database for exclusive access. This eliminates all locking which cuts a lot of overhead. In some cases it helps to use Jet in row level lock mode instead of page lock mode too, but it depends on your pattern of use.

This is why crude benchmarks can be irrelevant. There are tons of different optimizations that can be used to favor one situation or another.