[AccessD] Disconnected MS Access cient applications..

Shamil,

It looks to me like that is where MS is going with .Net, so it would be
logical to take Access in that direction as well ... If they would only
consider it a development tool instead of a power user toy.  I've
certainly built applications in the past using that concept with ADO and
unbound forms. (Hush, John, I don't want to hear about it!<g>)  I think
we often fall back to the built in stuff because it is quick and easy,
even though it is not necessarily efficient.  MS is moving toward XML as
their datastore of choice for this kind of caching, and it certainly
works and has been fairly easy to implement since at least Access 2000.
I would expect the capability to be expanded in the next version of
Access when it starts to catch up with Word and Excel, but that's just a
SWAG based on working extensively with VB.Net and speculating.  Given
that the next version of Access may not be available for a year or so
and is bound to have problems at first, I think something that could be
used now and with versions earlier than 2003 (which has its own
problems!) is entirely sensible.

Charlotte Foust


-----Original Message-----
From: Shamil Salakhetdinov [mailto:shamil at users.mns.ru] 
Sent: Wednesday, August 17, 2005 4:29 PM
To: !DBA-MAIN
Subject: [AccessD] Disconnected MS Access cient applications..


Hi All,

I wanted to ask you - what about the subject?
Anybody uses/interested to use MS Access client applications this way?

Do I miss obvious (RTFM) stuff and such a disconnected mode is already
implemented in MS Access and broadly used by MS Access developers? Yes,
I know ADO recordsets can be used with bound MS Access forms etc. but
this looks like a rather limited feature - am I wrong?

What I mean is cashing data locally into mdbs, only the data needed for
the currently open form(s) etc., processing this data and then updating
backend database(mdb, MSDE, MS SQL, whatever...) - with all this cashing
and updating made mostly automatically by a tiny framework code, based
on ADO.NET...(yes, this local caching of data is not a new subject but
nowadays it can be (re-)implement really scalable way with a way less
efforts than
before)

Maybe MS plans to do something like that?

Is that a wheel reinvention or anybody here sees such opportunity like a
really useful feature in their real life projects?

For me it looks like a useful feature because it could help: to get MS
Access back into mainstream development area because it will allow to
easily scale applications with MS Access front-ends...

There are many other ideas but most of them in this "ideas pool" based
on the subject one - if it doesn't make sense for real-life projects
then I'd better stop working on it...

What is your opinion about the subject?
When you expect MS will do something like that in MS Access?

Thank you,
Shamil