Drew Wutka
DWUTKA at marlow.com
Thu Apr 3 00:44:33 CST 2003
Arthur, I feel your pain! <grin>
A lot of what you talked about is EXACTLY why I am still using 97 for a
majority of my work. If A2k would have been a more solid release, then I
may have moved up a notch, but with as poorly as it performed when first
released, I was concreted in my opinion to stick with 97.
There are several problems/reasons with Microsoft's 'version' strategy.
Each new release has little advantage over the previous release.
Why? Simple, they don't want to reinvent the wheel, and to truly increase a
products capability, most of the time you need to start from scratch, so
that you don't have the same obstacles you had when designing the early
version. You can build from the ground up, keeping in mind what you are
trying 'avoid' or improve.
A lot of what IS changed in a new release is the look and feel.
That is something that is relatively easy to accomplish. Take an old crappy
car, give it a new paint job (and take out any dents), and you have probably
seriously increased it's resale value. Have you really increased it's value
though? Not by much. You have just made it shiner and prettier.
Unfortunately, most of the computer/software buying world is put in complete
rapture by shiny / pretty packages. (There's no other reason for Mac's
popularity! <evilgrin>).
Microsoft DOES NOT have the Access developer in mind when they make
a new release. Why? Simple, WE AREN'T THEIR MARKET SHARE! Who buys more
copies of Access, developers or end users? End Users of course. Thus, does
Microsoft want to cater Access to the developer, or to the end user? If
they had half a brain, they would ignore their accountants/marketing folks,
and cater to the developers, because the developers are what REALLY make the
end users buy Access. But they don't, they make Access 'simpler' and
'easier' for the end user. There is a problem with that though. If they
truly made Access 'smart', so that anyone could do what we all do for a
living, then they would have a really great product. Unfortunately, that is
not going to happen for quite some time, because it would be virtually
impossible to handle ALL of the scenarios we are put to the test on.
Another problem with truly improving a product is the platform the
product is designed for. I heard that Office 11 will not run on Windows 95
(or maybe it was 9x). That is actually a step in the right direction (sort
of). The NT architecture has serious advantages over the 9x machines,
however, if you have to design software to be backwards compatible, to a
'lesser' system, then you aren't going to get much of an increase in
performance, if you get any at all!
A new platform type is probably going to hit in a few years. Let's
take the 'major' Microsoft OSes. DOS, Windows 95 (though it's really DOS
7.0...we'll call it an OS for now...), Windows 2000. Now, for simplicities
sake, let's look at the processor speed that these run well on. It's
roughly a factor of 10. 10 mhz, 100 mhz, and 1000 mhz. I know that's not
when they were released, but at those speeds, the associated OS ran just
fine on them. Going by that, the next real jump will be when we have 10
gigahertz processors available. If you look at what is currently available
technology wise, it's possible to even predict some of the innate
capabilities of a new platform. Windows 2000 can already index your file
system, which immensely increases file searches. A truly new platform may
be able to index down to the actual data level, increasing ALL searches
(both files and db). You also have speech to text and a limited 'plain
language' SQL available. With the resources that will be available at 10
gigahertz (remember, HD speed and space will increase, RAM will increase,
etc.), it would be possible to truly have an intelligent machine that you
could just talk too. ('Wish Mom a Merry Christmas'...turns into an instant
email with Christmas greetings sent to your mother. To do that now, with
Speech to Text, you would have to 'talk' your computer through it.).
When a new platform comes out, THAT's when there will be a truly new
Access, if it is still a separate package. Not that MS would intentionally
destroy Access, but look at XP. You have a built in firewall (if you can
call it that! <grin>), and also built in Zip technology. A new platform
would probably have the entire Office Suite (and some) completely built into
it's 'accessories'.
Oh well, enough predicting.....
There is one thing that is going to really 'protect' the developers
world. Access is not a stand alone package, by that I mean that you don't
have to have Access to use it, and you also don't have to use it ONLY within
Access. Access is a great database system. To protect an application from
getting caught in the MS product update loop, just don't make FE's in
Access. Access FE's are susceptible to Office upgrades. Sure, if the
upgrade is perfect, then there's no issue, but can that be guaranteed?
However, a Web or VB interface to an Access database is not going to be
affected one bit, by an Office upgrade. If you have a 97 BE, with a VB FE,
and you go install Office 2002, or Office 11, you don't have to worry about
your VB/Access project one bit! I know that I'll probably get yelled at
about this paragraph, but you have to admit, that is a BIG advantage.
Access is extremely capable of making very impressive GUI's to it's data,
but it's fatal flaw is the MS product update cycle.
Drew
-----Original Message-----
From: Arthur Fuller [mailto:artful at rogers.com]
Sent: Wednesday, April 02, 2003 4:16 PM
To: accessd at databaseadvisors.com
Subject: RE: [AccessD] ADP vs Access mdb/SQL
F**K the NDA. You listers want an ostensible insider's take? Not that I'm
close to the bone, just that I have a beta and few high friends in low
places.
<snip>