Doug Murphy
dw-murphy at cox.net
Tue Feb 21 15:32:02 CST 2006
Charlotte, I am interested in becoming proficient in .NET but am concerned that our development costs will go up to our customers if use that technology. What do you think the time comparison is to develop an application in Access vs .NET once the .NET learning has been accomplished? I recently read an editorial in Smart Access by Peter Vogel who has been working in both environments that indicated that he thought Access is a much more efficient environment to develop in, assuming that the functionality you require is supported by Access. Doug -----Original Message----- From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Charlotte Foust Sent: Tuesday, February 21, 2006 1:16 PM To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving Subject: Re: [AccessD] Convert Access App to VB.Net (was FYI: Good news -VBAin Office 12 and beyond...) I don't know where to start, Dan. It would be a total rewrite, but the program logic could be used to build the new app. Learning curve is steep because *everything* is an object and doing anything to it (like populating a string that already has text) creates a NEW object with the same name. You don't do things the same way, but it is much easier to get at and manipulate data, to create datasets that include related fields from another table, to create reusable code. The list is endless. ADO.Net is GREAT, and I *liked* ADO. Building forms and user controls is quite different from Access because you have so much control over the objects and their behavior. Reports can be used in our web-based app or on Windows without modifications. Do you want to bind different parts of a form or report to different data sources? No problem. Do you want to bind controls to the top, left, right, bottom of the container so they move when the object resizes? No problem. Do you want a panel to fill its allocated space and stay that way through form resizes? No problem. Do you want custom behavior from a control? Create your own and use it in you apps. I'm a fan, as you can tell, but it is also easier to sell clients on .Net apps than on Access applications, justifiably or not. We build our apps so that we can connect to either an Access or SQL Server backend without changing any of the code, which makes it easy to switch a client over when they need the added capacity of SQL Server. It takes planning and learning and effort, so don't do it unless you are willing to commit to those things and you are willing to use managed code. There is no point at all in building one-off code in .Net. That's a waste of time and energy. Charlotte Foust -----Original Message----- From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Dan Waters Sent: Tuesday, February 21, 2006 11:22 AM To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving' Subject: Re: [AccessD] Convert Access App to VB.Net (was FYI: Good news -VBA in Office 12 and beyond...) OK Charlotte, What are these goodies? And the big question - what does it take to do the conversion (software, learning curve time, how to make reports, convert forms vs. modules vs. reports, etc.) For an Access application that has ~50K lines of code, is it worth it? Thanks! Dan -----Original Message----- That "juicy VBA goodness" can't hold a candle to the .Net goodies, Ken. Charlotte Foust -----Original Message----- From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Ken Ismert Sent: Monday, February 20, 2006 2:00 PM To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving Subject: Re: [AccessD] FYI: Good news - VBA in Office 12 and beyond... In fact, if you look at Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office, you'll find it has no built-in support for Access yet... http://msdn.microsoft.com/office/understanding/vsto/default.aspx As usual, Access lags behind its Office companions in terms of the latest development platform support. That means we'll be able to hang onto that juicy VBA goodness for at least one release beyond any of the other Office components. :) -Ken -----Original Message----- From: Shamil Salakhetdinov [mailto:shamil at users.mns.ru] Sent: Sunday, February 19, 2006 7:24 AM To: !DBA-MAIN Subject: [AccessD] FYI: Good news - VBA in Office 12 and beyond... http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=190669&SiteID=1 Shamil -- AccessD mailing list AccessD at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com -- AccessD mailing list AccessD at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com -- AccessD mailing list AccessD at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com -- AccessD mailing list AccessD at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com