[AccessD] Add-In Express 2009 for MS Office and .NET

Shamil Salakhetdinov shamil at smsconsulting.spb.ru
Tue Feb 9 11:51:52 CST 2010


Hi William --

Decompile - OK.

"Eat Bloat": it's up to Max to decide would it be worth to port his code to
a .NET COM-Add-in? In fact I worked on similar but a more advanced add-in in
1999 - this code (Application Manager) did disassemble MS Access application
databases into "MS Access object vault databases", and did build them back
from that vault with whatever configuration one needed etc.etc., and that
did solve, by the way, the bloat issue. Not sure all that advanced stuff is
needed nowadays...

<<<
I'd love to have an add-in that let me easily configure the property 
settings
>>>
Do you mean MS Access database (custom) properties? If yes - that's in my
plan already, also for MS Excel and MS Word...

<<<
there are so many add-ins that standardizing on a single AccessD version 
would be sweet
>>>
Yes, I'm thinking to maybe make this Access Developer Assistant an open
source project on CodePlex - with every new add-in being a "plug-in" to the
Access Developer Assistant add-in core. Then CodePlex will keep the stable
version of a set of small add-ins/plug-ins and everybody would be able to
use this code and to develop their own plug-ins to  test and use them
locally and then submit if they wish to the "host" Access Developer
Assistant core. That's doable but such a project needs an active group of
participants...

The "plug-ins" can be developed as separate Visual Studio (Express,
Standard, Professional,...) class-libraries using VB.NET, C#, C++/CLI....
It's not a big issue to make such a "pluggable" add-in here, and to share it
on CodePlex - it should be doable within one-two months in parallel to my
work for customers...

There are some technical questions how to "expose" "plug-ins" on MS Access
commandbars/ribbon using special XML(?) description - I must say I didn't
work with ribbon, and I do not know how this is done but that should be
doable AFAICG...

IMO very useful thing about "Add-In Express for Office and .NET" is that is
allows to create in design mode one's own commandbars/ribbons as well as to
extend standard menus/commandbars/ribbons and even extend standard popup
(right-click) MS Access IDE context menus, catch to host application events
etc. They define such extensions statically on design time - it should be
doable dynamically if needed using custom declarations of add-in core and
plug-ins...

<<<
V-Tools and MZTools are the ones I use most ...love the way MZTools just 
works in the VBE
>>>
Yes, that kind of stuff is doable - I even programmed some of similar stuff
but again this is not a work for one person if that will be an open source
project - it's very time consuming work for sure, I do know that from my
experience...

If there will be high interest here for this project I can talk to Add-In
Express owners to get a shared license to keep such a project on CodePlex
(without Add-In Express sources of course) - I suppose they (Add-In Express
owners) could be interested in such a "PR-campaign"? Although such a project
could also mean for them that they will lose some customers who will use
open source project and who will not purchase their software? 

I'm saying "shared" license, which means here that there will be a setup of
Access Developer Assistant "pluggable" core on CodePlex. And everybody would
be able to develop their own "plug-ins" to be activated from the core. But
I, of course, will not be able to share Add-In Express developer
setup/license, as that would not be accepted by Add-In Express Owners. Also,
I'm not 100% sure, would it be possible to share their MS Access/Office
version independent Primary Interop Assemblies (PIAs), which would be needed
for local development of plug-in class libraries...

I have got already sample add-in running here. I will test its setup in the
coming days, and I will make it available for download then. It doesn't do
that much - just shows About WinForm when activated from commandbar/ribbon,
and lists some database objects in a dialog box - but that's enough to test
how well setup works in "MS Access version independent" mode. BTW, Add-In
Express also has "click-once" setup their docs say. It has to be tested of
course but I'm quite sure it works well - Add-In Express company has already
got 10,000+ customers, and their support site is active and quality of
support is high...

All and every opinions on the subject, and probable Access Developer
Assistant open source project are very welcome! (I should note again - I'm
not sure yet how to "share" Add-In Express license and PIAs for an open
source project - it might be an issue blocking this probable project...)

Thank you.

--
Shamil

-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of William Hindman
Sent: Tuesday, February 09, 2010 3:48 PM
To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving
Subject: Re: [AccessD] Add-In Express 2009 for MS Office and .NET

Shamil

...second the decompile ...but an add-in should take it through the entire 
multi-step procedure to get back to a compiled/compacted state

...might be an ideal place to standardize Max's Eat Bloat code

...I'd love to have an add-in that let me easily configure the property 
settings of any mdb
    multiple configs would be nice, one for design mode work, one for 
pre-deployment as an mde, etc

...there are so many add-ins that standardizing on a single AccessD version 
would be sweet
    V-Tools and MZTools are the ones I use most ...love the way MZTools just

works in the VBE

William

--------------------------------------------------
From: "Shamil Salakhetdinov" <shamil at smsconsulting.spb.ru>
Sent: Monday, February 08, 2010 4:19 PM
To: "'Access Developers discussion and problem solving'" 
<accessd at databaseadvisors.com>
Subject: [AccessD] Add-In Express 2009 for MS Office and .NET

> Hi All -
>
>
>
> I have got the subject license 
> (http://www.add-in-express.com/add-in-net/ )
> and I wanted to try Add-In Express to develop a sample add-in - Access
> Developer Assistant, which will do a few useful things for Access
> Developers.
>
>
>
> I have got already developed a very simple sample MS Access add-in just to
> test how it all works - so far so good - it gets installed well and it's
> running in general but I have got a few questions to ask Add-In Express
> Developers on their site before I will make this sample add-in publicly
> available.
>
>
>
> I'm interested to hear your opinions and proposals what simple everyday
> tasks you wanted to see automated within the sample add-in? - that could 
> be
> any tasks including VBA coding generation/automation. I plan to post here
> (or in dba-VB? - that will be C# code) most of the code of the sample
> add-in.
>
>
>
> Good news about Add-In Express is that MS Office/Access add-ins developed
> using this tool could be made MS Office/Access version independent.
>
>
>
> Thank you.
>
>
>
> --
>
> Shamil
>
>






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