[AccessD] The future of Access, .NET and SQL

MartyConnelly martyconnelly at shaw.ca
Tue Sep 27 17:11:16 CDT 2005


Actually ADP is being dropped it won't hook into SQL Server 2005 unless 
the SQL Server 2005 is
installed in degraded SQL 2000 mode. You can still uses ADO from an MDB 
to get at SQL 2005
But SQL DMO is being replaced by SMO. which maybe part of the cause.
 Mary Chipman mentioned this. I can repost from her blog.
  I think that MDB format is being dropped from Office 12
 actually the whole Jet engine  may be replaced by something called ACE. 
but it will be backward compatible.
Maybe something to do with new LINQ language, but this is a wild guess.

 I just got another call for a contract on JCL REXX IMS DB2, if it is 
any consolation.
I usually go to these sites and ask for access to the IBM Redbooks and 
the reply is usually,"What??"
These guys still think Lyndon Johnson is president.

Arthur Fuller wrote:

>Frankly I would say that MS (the company) has never regarded Access as a
>serious development tool... this despite the efforts of the Access
>development team to make it one.
>The bottom line (of principal interest to MS) is that Access ships with
>Office, and despite the developer's kits, they always have and always will
>regard it as a toy, as compared (in various eras) with VB, VC, .NET et. al.
>We are the underground. We like RAD development and the Access development
>team keeps helping us do it. But it is not in the commercial interests of MS
>either to provide a genuine compiler or to provide a .NET porter. 
>I deeply admire the Access development team (knowing none of them
>personally). My take is that they fight an uphill battle to keep this
>product in contention; but MS the corporation is much more interested in the
>money it can make from .NET software, seminars, books etc.
>This is not to slag .NET either. It is a high-quality product and it can do
>things Access developers only dream of. But that is the dividing line. There
>will never be an MS-authored Access compiler, nor a tool to port Access apps
>to .NET. MS is in exactly the same position as Ashton-Tate was, so long ago,
>when my friend Brian Russell had a vision that led to Clipper, which
>revolutionized the dBASE marketplace back then. There seems to be no one to
>step up to the plate and provide an Access-compiler nor an Access->.NET
>converter, so here we are, not quite orphaned, and certainly not abandoned
>by the Access dev team (mucho kudos to them), but we are not in the MS
>mainstream.
>The greatest thing the Access dev team has achieved so far, IMO, is the ADP
>project format, which can speak directly to SQL. I don't know how long this
>will live. I hope for a long time. But I cannot help but think that inside
>Microsoft, various powers think of this as heresy, and tolerate it the same
>way they tolerate FoxPro. Funding will continue, but minimally. (This is
>pure conjecture; I don't know a soul within MS in any position of power or
>influence, so take my words as pure conjecture from a recipient of their
>software and nothing more.)
>I am slowly learning .NET. Only because the market seems certain to go that
>way. I would much prefer to stay with Access, and receive a compiler that
>delivers EXEs rather than the current run-time solutions, but I don't see
>that in the cards, nor see a third party with the skills to bring it to the
>table. So here I am, relatively expert at Access, an amateur at .NET, and
>thinking more and more and more that I should just concentrate on my real
>expertise and become a SQL Server DBA, and to hell with the application side
>of things.
>Perhaps I am just depressed this evening :)
>Arthur
>
>  
>

-- 
Marty Connelly
Victoria, B.C.
Canada






More information about the AccessD mailing list