Access Frontend Subform Issue

[Floris Kleijne]

I have an Access (accdb) frontend for my MySQL database, with some 20 tables and 60 views attached to the Access database as linked tables. Link is created through the 64-bits MySQL ODBC driver for Windows.

I have a form in the database that displays records from a view, with a subform displaying linked records from a different view. Form and subform are linked through the main form's primary key field, which field is also present in the subform. Form and subform are statically linked through the subform Data properties.

Previously, this worked perfectly.

I've recently moved my backend to MySQL 5.6.36, and my frontend from Access 2013 to Access 2016. Since those changes, the subform wouldn't load any longer, giving me an ODBC error.

I've now found a workaround: instead of linking the subform statically through its properties, I filter it dynamically, applying the filter condition through code running on the Form_Current event.

This works perfectly, but I don't understand why I had to. I can't find any documentation on the behavior on Google.

Why did the static subform link stop working, making this workaround necessary?