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

John W. Colby jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com
Wed Sep 28 09:24:40 CDT 2005


LOL, yea those kids...

I have been wanting to rebuild my site forever.  I finally discovered this
DotNetNuke thing which is really quite an awesome piece of work IMHO, so I
decided to use it for a client site I am building.  When I saw how easy it
is to get the structure built and plain text content up I decided to go do
it for my site as well.  

But of course I have to make a living as well.

As for remembering stuff... I use FireFox which just memorizes the username
/ password.  I type in j and it knows about jcolby and the password I used
for THAT site.  No more memory.  Of course if this computer dies I am
screwed.

John W. Colby
www.ColbyConsulting.com 

Contribute your unused CPU cycles to a good cause:
http://folding.stanford.edu/

-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of William Hindman
Sent: Wednesday, September 28, 2005 10:04 AM
To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving
Subject: Re: [AccessD] The future of Access, .NET and SQL


..sheesh :(

..I hate that registration stuff ...now I have to remember something and 
that's getting harder and harder every year :(

..but I'm in ...so what's taking you so long, eh? ...kids keeping you up :)

William

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "John W. Colby" <jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com>
To: "'Access Developers discussion and problem solving'" 
<accessd at databaseadvisors.com>
Sent: Wednesday, September 28, 2005 9:43 AM
Subject: Re: [AccessD] The future of Access, .NET and SQL


> William,
>
> It is not all up there yet, in fact I am just starting that phase.  I 
> am requiring a registration to get at that stuff though.  Simple 
> name/email and you are in.  I need to somehow communicate that on the 
> main page or header area.
>
> John W. Colby
> www.ColbyConsulting.com
>
> Contribute your unused CPU cycles to a good cause: 
> http://folding.stanford.edu/
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
> [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of William 
> Hindman
> Sent: Wednesday, September 28, 2005 8:49 AM
> To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving
> Subject: Re: [AccessD] The future of Access, .NET and SQL
>
>
> ..and where oh where are your downloads? ...I went looking for 
> something I knew you had the other night and lo! ...t'was all gone :(
>
> William
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "John W. Colby" <jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com>
> To: "'Access Developers discussion and problem solving'"
> <accessd at databaseadvisors.com>
> Sent: Tuesday, September 27, 2005 7:54 PM
> Subject: Re: [AccessD] The future of Access, .NET and SQL
>
>
>> LOL, they are all starting to look like DotNetNuke sites.  DNN sites 
>> can be
>> skinned but DNN provides specific functionality and so little icons for
>> getting at that functionality are appearing in the interface.  I just
>> added
>> a free skin to my site which changes it a little bit.  More can be done,
>> but
>> I am not yet up on how to do it.
>>
>> John W. Colby
>> www.ColbyConsulting.com
>>
>> Contribute your unused CPU cycles to a good cause: 
>> http://folding.stanford.edu/
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
>> [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Jim 
>> Lawrence
>> Sent: Tuesday, September 27, 2005 4:27 PM
>> To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving'
>> Subject: Re: [AccessD] The future of Access, .NET and SQL
>>
>>
>> Hi John:
>>
>> Is it my imagination but are all the new sites starting to look the 
>> same???
>>
>> Jim
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
>> [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of John W. 
>> Colby
>> Sent: Tuesday, September 27, 2005 7:58 AM
>> To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving'
>> Subject: Re: [AccessD] The future of Access, .NET and SQL
>>
>>>Like it or not, .Net is here to stay it seems.
>>
>> Yes, I have to agree.  And to be quite honest I like it - IF you have 
>> high speed internet to assist in looking up stuff that isn't in the 
>> books. .Net is far and away the most powerful development framework I 
>> have ever seen. With power comes... Confusion, steep learning curves, 
>> huge time commitments.
>>
>>
>> The nice part is that MS has poured so much time and energy into 
>> .net, and indeed appears to be using it themselves in-house, that it 
>> appears unlikely that it will ever just "go  away" as so many other 
>> MS "greatest thing since sliced bread" projects have.
>>
>> Just an aside, I brought up my new web site last week - 
>> www.colbyconsulting.com.  It uses DotNetNuke (DNN) which is an entire 
>> framework for building web sites.  DotNetNuke is an awesome tool, but 
>> it is also an entire ASP.net application in it's own right.  If you 
>> register on my site, you will have access to a Forums page (nothing 
>> in it yet of course).
>> The forums module is just a snap-in to DNN.  I went out and found it,
>> uploaded it, inserted a page and dropped the module on the page.  Voila,
>> forums in my site for whatever I think is useful to discuss.
>>
>> DNN is about separating appearance from content from process.  You 
>> can (once you come up to speed, which in this case isn't THAT hard) 
>> just edit the content that you see on a web page directly in a text 
>> editor, on-line in your site.  You can add / delete pages, already 
>> (automatically) linked to menu items, or submenu items.  
>> Theoretically you can skin it (yea, my new site is pretty ... Uhh... 
>> "Functional looking" so far).  Skins are not content, are not 
>> process.  And of course, if you need process (a program) you have 
>> .NET available at your fingertips.
>>
>> I am looking at developing a set of custom modules for DNN for a web 
>> site I
>> am trying to get happening - www.StarfishKatrina.com .  I need a custom
>> program to allow congregations to volunteer to assist families needing
>> relocation assistance, and which allow aid organizations to find these
>> congregations.  The web site is just the middle man but I need a couple 
>> of
>> pages to allow these two entities to enter themselves into a database 
>> (SQL
>> Server is available to DNN modules, and perhaps MySQL as well).  Since 
>> DNN
>> is ASP.Net based, and has a well defined interface for building modules
>> that
>> "snap-in" to DNN, I hope(!) that doing this will be on the trivial side.
>>
>> DNN already has code for building what they call 
>> CommonBusinessObjects
>> (CBOs) which are just the data classes for a table, and what they call
>> a "hydrator" that loads instances of ANY CBO from a matching table.
>> Pass in a data reader and a class type and back comes an instance of
>> that class type containing all the data from a record in the table.
>> As long as your properties match the field names, it just works.
>>
>> This kind of stuff makes the process of developing data driven 
>> applications MUCH easier, and can exist exactly because of the power 
>> of .NET (ASP.Net in
>> this case) being leveraged by the DNN developers being leveraged by ME!
>>
>> Yea, .Net is tough to get into but it is just so powerful, so much 
>> stuff just ready to use, and so much else already available out there 
>> for a download.
>>
>> I am in no way "there" yet, or even close, but I am definitely on my 
>> way.
>>
>> John W. Colby
>> www.ColbyConsulting.com
>>
>> Contribute your unused CPU cycles to a good cause: 
>> http://folding.stanford.edu/
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
>> [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Jim 
>> Dettman
>> Sent: Tuesday, September 27, 2005 10:28 AM
>> To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving
>> Subject: Re: [AccessD] The future of Access, .NET and SQL
>>
>>
>> Arthur,
>>
>> <<Perhaps I am just depressed this evening :)>>
>>
>>  No, I just think your being realistic.  .Net is here to say whether 
>> we like it or not.  About four years ago I started looking for 
>> alternatives to Access and settled on Visual Fox Pro despite the fact 
>> that it was
>> (supposedly) "on it's last legs", but it gave me some of what Access 
>> offered (integrated DB engine) and yet got around some of the short 
>> comings (not being able to produce EXE or do n-Tier designs).
>>
>>  As a result, I ignored .Net.  I think I'm going to pay for that now. 
>> I've already lost one consulting job because I had no .Net experience 
>> and by the
>> time I do finally manage to get my arms around it, I'll probably have 
>> lost
>> quite a few more.
>>
>> Like it or not, .Net is here to stay it seems.
>>
>> Jim.
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
>> [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com]On Behalf Of Arthur 
>> Fuller
>> Sent: Tuesday, September 27, 2005 2:05 AM
>> To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving'
>> Subject: [AccessD] The future of Access, .NET and SQL
>>
>>
>> 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 
>> Access->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
>>
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