[AccessD] AXP Question

John Colby jcolby at colbyconsulting.com
Mon Jun 9 08:10:13 CDT 2003


It sounds to me like the report changes due to customer needs.  However it
seems that the way to handle this would be to analyze what is constantly
changing and do that programatically.

John W. Colby
www.colbyconsulting.com

-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com]On Behalf Of Wortz, Charles
Sent: Monday, June 09, 2003 9:06 AM
To: accessd at databaseadvisors.com
Subject: RE: [AccessD] AXP Question


Roz,

Users that want constant changes to the layout of reports should expect
delays, if not worse! <grin>  If they cannot agree on the layout of a
report and then live with it until a major change is needed, they should
find other employment. <grin>

Once I put a report into production, the user has to live with it until
the next set of scheduled changes or a business/regulatory rule change.
In development, the user can suggest all sort of changes, but once they
sign-off on it and it goes into production they must live with their
decisions.  And higher management is willing to enforce those rules with
few exceptions because they recognize IT as a limited and valuable
resource.

If your environment is different from this, then you may want to
consider other job opportunities.

Charles Wortz
Software Development Division
Texas Education Agency
1701 N. Congress Ave
Austin, TX 78701-1494
512-463-9493
CWortz at tea.state.tx.us



-----Original Message-----
From: Roz Clarke [mailto:roz.clarke at donnslaw.co.uk]
Sent: Monday 2003 Jun 09 04:08
To: 'accessd at databaseadvisors.com'
Subject: RE: [AccessD] AXP Question

This makes perfect sense if writing an application that doesn't have to
get changed by the users. But consider this scenario:

We are building a front end for a data warehousing application (data on
SQL Server 7). We need the front end to be flexible as it must provide
equivalent functionality to 4 Access databases currently in use, each
holding anywhere from 4 - 40 forms and around 100 reports, which are
updated & maintained solely by IT (a v. bad thing - we are committed to
getting involved every time they want to change the layout of a report,
and it causes an overnight delay as we can only write changes into the
live database between 12 midnight and 6am. This has the users hopping
mad and has resulted in the company failing to meet SLAs with client
companies). We have been running AXP for 6 months and they have still
not come to terms with the delays.

In A97 I would have made the forms & reports flexible by allowing users
to
a) make temporary changes to objects at runtime, replacing these at the
end of the session, and b) copy report objects and make their own
changes to the new report. Now I can't.

We can't provide each user with their own FE to hold even temporary
changes as we are on terminal server.

I'm starting to think that Access has become the wrong tool for the job.
Any suggestions?

Roz

-----Original Message-----
From: Wortz, Charles [mailto:CWortz at tea.state.tx.us]
Sent: 06 June 2003 17:52
To: accessd at databaseadvisors.com
Subject: RE: [AccessD] AXP Question


Brett,

You partition the app and have each developer work on their db.  Then if
the dbs need to be reunited you have a senior developer recombine them.
You are using a configuration management and/or version control tool,
are you not?

Charles Wortz
-----Original Message-----
From: Brett Barabash [mailto:BBarabash at TappeConstruction.com]
Sent: Friday 2003 Jun 06 11:10
To: 'accessd at databaseadvisors.com'
Subject: RE: [AccessD] AXP Question

What about environments like ours where you have multiple developers
developing in the same development MDB?  It was fairly trivial to do
this with older versions of Access.


-----Original Message-----
From: Wortz, Charles [mailto:CWortz at tea.state.tx.us]
Sent: Friday, June 06, 2003 11:00 AM
To: accessd at databaseadvisors.com
Subject: RE: [AccessD] AXP Question


As I said in another post, since the dark ages of computing,
professional developers have a development version of the application
they work on, and the users use a production version of the application.
When you are ready to move the development version to production, you
follow a set procedure to replace the old production version with the
new production version.  Only in dire emergencies should a developer
have to tinker with the actual production version.  And even then, all
the users should be out of the application.

All the above applies whether the application is in Access, VB, Cobol,
SQLServer, VFP, Oracle, etc.  I doubt that you can find any software
development shop that has been in business for a few years that doesn't
follow this model.  If you have been developing software for a while, I
am sure you follow this model (at least informally) just to keep your
sanity.

Charles Wortz

-----Original Message-----
From: Charlotte Foust [mailto:cfoust at infostatsystems.com]
Sent: Friday 2003 Jun 06 10:45
To: accessd at databaseadvisors.com
Subject: RE: [AccessD] AXP Question

Not unwanted by everyone.  I'm perfectly happy with that change.

Charlotte Foust

-----Original Message-----
From: ACTEBS [mailto:actebs at actebs.com.au]
Sent: Friday, June 06, 2003 7:24 AM
To: accessd at databaseadvisors.com
Subject: RE: [AccessD] AXP Question


Terri,

Charles just alerted me to the fact that since the release of A2K, if
you use the Shift key to bypass the normal startup, you are opening the
DB exclusively. A new unwanted feature kindly supplied by M$...

Vlad

-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Terri Jarus
Sent: Friday, 6 June 2003 10:27 PM
To: accessd at databaseadvisors.com
Subject: [AccessD] AXP Question


I have upgraded a FE database from A97 to AXP successfully,  however, a
major difference that is annoying me is the fact that in a multiuser
environment, I am unable to make changes to the design unless I open
exclusively.

I never had this problem in A97 and now that my users are all getting
upgraded to the AXP FE, I am running across a few areas that need to be
tweaked and can't do it until everyone is out of the db.  This is a
shared network FE.

I should probably give everyone their own copy on their desktop,
however, this database has evolved greatly over the past 3 years and has
required many changes.  I have always been able to make these changes
while the db was being used by others with no problem.  There are about
20 users - so upgrading everyone's FE would be very tedious.

I know there are some automated programs to do the updating, but one I
had tried took too long and was cumbersome to the user.

Any suggestions or ideas - is there a setting I'm missing that would
allow design changes while in use???

Thanks for any help.
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