ACTEBS
actebs at actebs.com.au
Wed Jun 23 18:29:55 CDT 2004
Arthur, I hope you get to achieve and see everything you want to. Truly, truly sad news - you've brought a tear to my eye... I wish you all the best and can't wait to read/see your screenplay. Best wishes Vlad -----Original Message----- From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Arthur Fuller Sent: Thursday, 24 June 2004 9:11 AM To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving' Subject: [AccessD] For Money or Love IMO this is not required. I just need to be guaranteed my rent and phone bill and food and cat food and car insurance, etc. Beyond that, I don't need to accumulate wealth. I just want my obligations covered, and if I have any time left then it's free. Not to say I am the measure of anyone but myself, but that's my frame of reference. I'm writing a screenplay in my off-hours currently. It may sell; I have sold two previously and thus have an agent who is interested; but frankly I don't care whether it sells. I have some serious medical issues and won't be around much more than a year. Faced with that kind of news, one confronts "what do you want to do before you bid adieu"? -- mitigated of course by what can you afford to do, and so on. I reduced my list to 3 items -- go to Ireland for a visit, revisit Paris for a couple of days to review the most beautiful city in the world, and knock out the aforementioned screenplay. Anything else that I manage is wonderful and gratuitous and gratis. I do need to make a living for a year or so, but I can do that in about 20 hours a week. The screenplay will take another hour a day minimum. I confess that I am running out of petrol, however; thus my relative absence from this list. I can manage it once a week or so, and respond too late to most messages to be useful and timely. But I feel that I have made a lot of friends here, despite the fact that I have never met almost all of you. "Nothing concentrates the mind like the knowledge that you will hanged in the morning." Arthur -----Original Message----- From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of DWUTKA at marlow.com Sent: Wednesday, June 23, 2004 1:30 PM To: accessd at databaseadvisors.com Subject: RE: [AccessD] Hiding Back End Design 'Open source' should pervade into all areas of the information age. Music, programming, videos, etc. Unfortunately it will take a complete change in humanity's driving force....the accumulation of wealth. As long as people are trying to make a buck, it will be virtually impossible to get them to do stuff simply for the betterment of society. Drew -----Original Message----- From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com]On Behalf Of Arthur Fuller Sent: Wednesday, June 23, 2004 10:15 AM To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving' Subject: RE: [AccessD] Hiding Back End Design I'm in late on this thread, but it seems to me that this requirement for a hidden database design should have been in the project specs right from the start, and that its presence there should have signalled a warning that Access was the wrong database for this job, and the wrong front end too. Something like VB with a RAIMA back end would IMO have been a wiser choice. Of course, if this requirement were not in the project specs from the beginning, who would know? This is one of those classic examples of how major changes to the specs introduced late in the game cost 20 times as much as they would have if introduced early. On the subject of open-source, way back when in the days of Clipper I had a company that sold 6 libraries for Clipper developers. We included all the source code to each of them. Most of the code was in Clipper, but some was in C and some in assembly language. No doubt some people did things with it that were not covered in the license, but on the other hand a small cadre of "believers" formed around us, and some of them submitted significant enhancements to our original code. We credited them in the comments on the relevant source files and mentioned them in the documentation, and sent them an Artful sweatshirt. That was payment enough for them. This is hardly the Linux open-source model, I realize. I wish that the open-source model would "infect" the Windows world more than it has so far. Access developers are among the most willing to share, I find, but there is lots of VB and C and C++ code out there too. Most of the time these free offerings are components or gussied-up controls and so on. It would be cool, IMO, if it went up a notch, to the application level. For example, apps vaguely like the application wizard can create in Access. Unfortunately, most of these wiz-generated demo-apps don't reflect good design principles, IMO. While on this subject, does anyone know how to interface with this wiz-generator? I.e., suppose I want to create (let's keep it simple for the discussion) a General Ledger app with a Chart of Accounts, General Journals etc., can I do so in such a way that the wizard will detect its presence and automatically add it to the list of apps you can generate? If memory serves, old versions of this wizard offered to populate the resulting app with sample data, but new versions don't. Anyone have any idea why this feature was dropped? Arthur -----Original Message----- From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of ACTEBS Sent: Monday, June 21, 2004 10:20 PM To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving' Subject: RE: [AccessD] Hiding Back End Design Gustav, "Personally, I think the time for proprietary systems has passed - customers need systems they can drag data from to be used elsewhere." Never a truer word said. With the decision by the Munich government to migrate to Linux, France looking to do the same and Brazil on the verge, it seems as though the end is nigh for the proprietary software/business model. Hmmm, sorry I went a bit off topic there..... ; ) Rocky - if a cracker wants to crack your software he will. There are teams of these people out there who see it as a challenge. Why waste your time? Vlad -----Original Message----- From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Gustav Brock Sent: Tuesday, 22 June 2004 4:02 AM To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving Subject: Re: [AccessD] Hiding Back End Design Hi Rocky No, you cannot open or attach tables from the BE without the correct password. But as stated from several already, you can google up at least three password crackers. Next step would be Access security as mentioned by Drew, and the next would be to apply field encryption which is a major step. By why not turn it completely around: make the design open and documented as "this is the way to build a database for an application like this"? Then you are the master and everyone else is the replicant - following the "Rocky" standard. Personally, I think the time for proprietary systems has passed - customers need systems they can drag data from to be used elsewhere. Also, I really doubt someone can figure out the intelligence of your app just by watching the table design. One can watch what is going on when data have been entered or updated but not _how_, and if someone can figure it out, he will already know how to build a similar app without knowing your table design. /gustav > If I'm reading the help file correctly, encryption does not hide the > objects, just the data, yes? I need to hide the design of the back > end. Password protection is too weak. I'll be up against > professionals. > Rocky > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Gustav Brock" <gustav at cactus.dk> > To: "Access Developers discussion and problem solving" > <accessd at databaseadvisors.com> > Sent: Monday, June 21, 2004 9:41 AM > Subject: Re: [AccessD] Hiding Back End Design >> Hi Rocky >> >> You can encrypt the database. Not bulletproof, of course, but keeps >> the average user away. >> >> /gustav >> >> > Is there a way to easily hide the back end design? My distributor >> > in > Taiwan feels that if the back end design is not hidden then the > product can > be easily knocked off. -- _______________________________________________ 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 -- _______________________________________________ AccessD mailing list AccessD at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com