[AccessD] SQL 2005 with A2007 vs A2003 (was: SQL vs Access)

As some wag once so eloquently said, "It depends."

I was one of the earliest adopters of the ADP file format, introduced in
Access 2000. I dove in headlong, smacked my forehead on a few dozen rocks at
the bottom of the pool, survived and learned how and what to do in terms of
using stored procedures, views, etc. I fell in love.

Times change, and so do versions. SQL 2005 introduced a bunch of new things
that are not supported in A2K or A2K3, and for obvious reasons. How could
the Access team know in advance what SQL 2K5 would look like? Some of the
new features include:

A revised notion of Schema -- much better in my opinion, but unknown to A2K
and A2K3.
Table functions -- a fantastic new addition, much like a view except that it
accepts parameters and returns a table. You can go even further: because
they return a table, you can use them anywhere you can use a table: you can
do joins etc. Again, A2K and A2K3 know nothing of these.
New data types -- same issue. Of course, if you use only the old data types
then this is a non-issue.

When Express 2005 first shipped, it didn't include the equivalent of
Management Studio, but now that's available, so perhaps if you stay away
from the new schema concept and table UDFs then you'll be fine.

hth,
Arthur

On Fri, Feb 1, 2008 at 12:41 PM, Dan Waters <dwaters at usinternet.com> wrote:

> Arthur,
>
> I am soon going to convert all my systems from A2003 FE/BE to A2003 FE /
> SQL
> Express 2005 BE.
>
> But your email says, "It works, sort of."  Could you elaborate on this?
> You've got me nervous!
>
> Thanks,
> Dan
>